Mississippi High School Drops Prom Due to Lesbian Couple

Pathetic.

 

Good news: she won her case.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/07/20/mississippi.lesbian.settlement/index.html?hpt=T2

 

That's nothing. Homophobia is still socially acceptable, on a (gradually diminishing, yes, but) still pretty large scale.

Watched a Morgan Freeman documentary on HBO the other day, about racially integrating a high school prom. In Mississippi. In 2008.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prom_Night_in_Mississippi:
[rquoter]The documentary is about the senior prom in Charleston, Mississippi. The high school in Charleston (a community of 2,100 residents) has an average of 80 graduates per year, and up until 2008 had separate, segregated proms for black students and white students,[3] despite Mississippi fully integrating their schools in 1970.[5] In 1997 Morgan Freeman (a resident of Charleston since 1991) approached the school and offered to pay for the prom, provided it be racially integrated. The school declined Freeman's offer. In 2008 Freeman offered again, and the school agreed to move forward with an integrated prom.[/rquoter]
Just like above, the, ahem, traditionalist parents broke off and kept their children in the whites-only sponsored prom, as expected.

Mississippi = time warp 1960s, still a-burnin'

 

Disgusting... I have zero faith in mankind...

 

I have mixed feelings about this.

I haven't followed this case in detail but was McMillen's suit about them not having a prom initially, having two proms, or something else?

While I agree it was total asshatery on the part of the school district and community to initially threaten to do away with the prom altogether and then also have a second prom where the lesbian couple and special needs kids weren't invited but at the same time I'm not sure that having a private prom is something that can be grounds for a lawsuit.

We have a right to associate with who we want in private and if the second prom was a completely privately organized affair I don't see how that is grounds to sue for not being invited anymore than a student would have grounds to sue for not being invited to someone's house party. At the same time if the prom the school put on was open to everyone technically they aren't discriminating and it isn't a civil rights violation for most of the students, of their own free will, to decide to not attend the official prom.

The other question I have is how much of a role did the school play in organizing the private prom. If they did then I think that is grounds for a civil rights violation but if it was completely private, even if the school knew about it, I have a hard time seeing that as a rights violation of McMillen.

Let me be clear that I am saying that what the community did wasn't right in the moral sense. What they did was morally reprehensible IMO but I also think under the right of association even homophobes have a right to choose who they associate with in private.

Also one other part of the story I would like to hear is about the special needs kids who went to the official Prom. Clearly these kids were excluded from the other prom and if the basis of the lawsuit was that McMillen was discriminated against by not being invited to the other prom it seems to me like the special needs kids also have grounds to sue.

 

So let me get this straight. The Sharia law that covers much of the middle east allows men to kill women legally, but you lose your "faith over mankind" because a school will not allow a lesbian attend prom?

 

Let me get this straight. Adam and Eve ate a piece of fruit they were told to not eat, but you lose your "faith over mankind" because Sharia law allows men to kill women legally?

(Yeah, that has about as much relevance to this thread as your objection. Agenda? )