Posted on 03/12/2010 5:05:12 AM PST by NYer
A small town Mississippi High School has decided to cancel its school prom after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) demanded the school permit a female student to wear a tux to the prom and attend with her lesbian partner.
Now the ACLU is suing the school, asking the courts to force the Itawamba County School District to hold the prom and permit 18-year-old Constance McMillen to attend with her lesbian partner and to cross-dress. (Read the lawsuit here)
Bryan Fischer, Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association, told LifeSiteNews (LSN) that he was taken aback by the “hypocrisy” of the ACLU. Fischer said, “ACLU is always telling us how wrong it is to impose our values on others, but here its clear that they are perfectly willing to ram their values down the throats of an entire school district and all of its students.”
“Now they are even trying to get a federal judge to dictate to the school whether they hold a prom or not,” he added.
Besides offending the moral sensibilities of many of the families in the Bible-belt with children attending the school, there are concerns that the wearing of a tuxedo by a girl would contravene the school’s strict dress code, which states, “Clothing and general appearance are not to be the type that would cause a disturbance.” The school’s dress code is admittedly “conservative,” also forbidding skirts above the knee, muscle shirts and exposure of undergarments.
Fischer said that while the ACLU asserts that McMillen is being treated unfairly, she is in fact being given the same right as all other students – to bring an opposite sex date to the prom. A February 5 memo from the school to students noted that each student may invite one guest to the prom and that the guest “must be of the opposite sex.”
What the ACLU fuss over the case suggests, said Fischer, “is that homosexual activists do not want equal rights but special rights.”
Itawamba County School District issued a statement yesterday saying that “due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events” it has decided not to host a prom at the High School this year. “It is our hope that private citizens will organize an event for the juniors and seniors,” the statement added.
The ACLU has previously forced schools to acquiesce to its demands. In November 2009, Tharptown High School in Alabama permitted Cynthia Stewart, 17, to attend the prom with another girl as her ‘date’. The school originally decided to cancel the prom rather than offend moral sensibilities, but capitulated when threatened with legal action by the ACLU.
The precedent on such cases was set in Canada in 2002. 17-year-old Marc Hall insisted that he be allowed to bring his 21-year-old boyfriend to the prom at his Catholic school. When the school refused to permit it, and canceled the prom rather than offend the school’s religious creed, homosexual activists made Hall into a cause célèbre, suing the school for $100,000.
The Ontario English Catholic Teachers Union (OECTA) actively sided with Hall against Catholic education and Church authorities and intervened in the case. Over half the teachers in Monsignor John Pereyma Catholic Secondary School supported Hall’s action.
In an interim ruling on the day of the prom, Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert MacKinnon issued an injunction saying that Hall could not be forbidden from attending with his homosexual date and that the school was not permitted to cancel the prom. The prom took place as the court ordered without significant protest from Catholic authorities.
In 2005, Hall dropped his lawsuit and the Catholic school board involved was never able to have a court decide finally on the matter.
The ACLU seems to be following the same method employed by homosexual activists in Canada. The ACLU says it will ask the court in the next few days to grant McMillen a preliminary injunction ordering the school to reinstate the April 2 prom, let McMillen and her girlfriend go to the prom together, and let McMillen wear a tuxedo to the event.
The case, Constance McMillen v. Itawamba County School District, et al., also named as defendants Superintendent Teresa McNeece and Itawamba Agricultural High School Principal Trae Wiygul and Vice Principal Rick Mitchell.
No spokesman from the school district was available for comment on this story.
>>>You really should read the article more closely before responding, because it clearly states the school had a strict dress code.
Hence she asked for permission to go outside the dress code. Had permission been denied she could have dressed as a slut and fit in with the rest of her classmates, but I don’t really see that as an improvement. Ladies have been wearing trousers for almost a century now. Most people don’t get the vapors at the sight. Darn you Kate Hepburn.
The matter of the gender of her date apparently was not so particularly limited. This left the school unable to block the girls other then to cancel the entire dance.
Or put another way, if they DID have controlling rules in place, why not just enforce them instead of taking away the prom from all the “nice” people? How is that so complicated?
The right move would have been to change the rules for next years prom. As clueless as they come off in this story, they’d probably screw that up too though.
I read fine, thanks. Usually anyway.
Why do we have to be tolerant of them, not name call and accept their deviant behavior? A lot of homosexuals are the most intolerant hateful name calling group around.
“Girls dancing together is an abomination ? Just a tip, avoid Rockefeller Center. There are some girls there called Rockettes, and they dance together 50 at a time. Saints preserve us.”
That’s silly. It is the intent behind these two lesbian’s actions in question here. It is their homosexual agenda. I doubt the Rockettes are dancing in a line together because of their sexual interest in one another.
Call me a party pooper but I think if proms were called off everywhere, it would be just fine. It is a sink hole for money and energy. I think they are way out of hand. Maybe the school decided that too.
It is really curious to me what so many parents will give their kids for something like the prom which is fun but so unimportant to the rest of their lives. But same parents won’t make their kids do anything they don’t want to do even if it would be best for them.
Why? To what? Any fetish is acceptable? ANY fetish just to keep it "fair?" Why should they change their entire culture because two out of thousands couldn't get their heads on straight?
Maybe they like their rules, so why change them? Why don't the two girls just wear a dress and get over it for the sake of the entire school? Why do they think their fetish is more important than everyone elses prom night?
You mean the Rockettes are a bunch of lesbians shoving their lifestyle in your face? If not, then you don’t seem to get the issue.
tlb: “The matter of the gender of her date apparently was not so particularly limited.”
From the article: “A February 5 memo from the school to students noted that each student may invite one guest to the prom and that the guest “must be of the opposite sex.””
The school only canceled the prom AFTER the ACLU threatened to sue if the school didn’t bend its rules to accommodate the lesbian, which gets back to my earlier point that the school has the right to set standards. You may think those standards are unreasonable. I might agree. Nevertheless, it isn’t OUR school.
If a lesbian can force the school to accommodate her wishes, what’s next? As I wrote earlier, homosexuals are not a protected class (and I hope they never are). If they were, she might have had a reasonable argument. Just because some liberals are trying to make an end run around the law by making sexual orientation equal to race, religion, national origin, etc., doesn’t make it so.
“Where do normal people draw the line”
Pity it’s something we even have to do. I dislike how these freaks keep pushing and pushing and pushing.
Tuxedoes are for men,lesbo!
They aren't punishing everyone. They are simply suggesting the prom be a private affair and not controlled by homosexual activists and the ACLU.
Maybe you don't. I certainly don't consider you one.
You are talking about straight women who are feminine, not butch lesbians. It’s not the same thing at all.
Go to you tube and look up drag kings. There is a video on how to bind the boobs and add facial hair in preparation for a lgbt prom in Hawaii.
>>>Maybe you don’t. I certainly don’t consider you one.
I’ll cry myself to sleep agonizing over your disapproval. Meanwhile my post particularly makes the point the ACLU is making an unsupportable argument, and expresses my disapproval of the collective punishment of the entire student body who did nothing wrong.
And in your sad alternate reality that’s “tub thumping for the ACLU” and “pushy lesbians”? geez
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