That Constance McMillen was tricked into going to a fake prom by her classmates, their parents, and almost certainly the school administration, is heartbreaking, but not terribly surprising. You expected something from the outset, given the atmosphere of prejudice and hate one school kid’s simple, uncomplicated desire to experience her prom the same way other kids do engendered. But this is very surprising…

Two students with learning difficulties were among the seven people at the country club event, McMillen recalls. “They had the time of their lives,” McMillen says. “That’s the one good thing that come out of this, [these kids] didn’t have to worry about people making fun of them [at their prom].

Dig it. A couple learning disabled kids got tracked to the fake prom too. Look at this…really look at it. Sometimes it’s the small incidents, the little skirmishes, that really explain what this culture war is all about, and there is a good one. None of this was about morality, let alone homosexuality. It was never about any of that. What it was always about, was contempt. Contempt for the Other. The kids at the real prom, and their parents, were probably laughing their butts off all night long about the short bus prom.

The girl is right…that those two kids had a good time at a prom they weren’t made fun of after all was a good thing to come of all this. Her and the others who were there can at least be proud of that much. But can we dispense now with this charade that the opposition to McMillen attending the prom with her girlfriend was a moral issue. No. This was about a group of kids, their parents, and god help them all their teachers, who think their knuckle-dragging contempt for people who are disadvantaged, less fortunate, or different entitles them to some sort of privileged status.

But sending those two learning disabled kids to the fake prom could end up getting that community into a lot more hot water then their attack on one lesbian schoolkid. Federal protections for disabled kids have a lot of clout, but that’s the least of it. The stench of all this will linger in the national memory for a long time, simply by virtue of its laughing-in-your-face mockery of everything wholesome and decent America sees itself as being. These aren’t moral crusaders standing tall for righteousness, they’re grade school bullies. Runts who buy their self esteem the only way they can, by kicking the smaller kids around. One lesbian schoolgirl was denied her prom that night, and made the best of it she could. But notice how, in Itawamba County, two learning disabled kids could only have theirs by being somewhere that night the rest of their classmates weren’t. There is all you need to know about that community and its morals.