I wrote last night about Ceara Sturgis, the latest lesbian teenager to give Mississippi the heebie jeebies, what with her intelligence, integrity, and ability to look good in a tuxedo. The people of Mississippi, of course, responded by scrubbing all records of Ceara from her high school yearbook, because you can’t expect any more from the sort of “adults” they breed down there, apparently.
So when I saw this tweet from rising (and for good reason) singer Janelle Mon?°e, I smiled:
I love it. The comments she’s referring to are at Dan Savage’s place, where one person posted the letter they sent Ceara Sturgis’s principal:
Dear Mr. Hawkins,
I can’t believe that you and your administration made the decision to exclude an honor student from this year’s yearbook just because of her sexual orientation and her wish to dress in a different type of formalwear than the other girls in the senior class. How could you be so small-minded and thoughtless? It’s 2010, you should be able to deal with the image of a woman wearing a tuxedo. For example, Janelle Monae looks great in hers and so do her other women dancers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xktMnfb0Q… so maybe you should learn to respect your students’ awesome sartorial choices?
I suggest that everyone else spam him with the “Tightrope” video too.
Heh. Here’s that “Tightrope” video. Janelle and the dancers DO look amazing in their tuxedos, and so do Mississippi girls who happen to love other girls.
Hop on over to Janelle’s website to hear “Cold War” as well. You won’t be sorry.
My spouse and I wore tuxedos at our wedding and let me tell you, she looked pretty damned HOT. I have yet to see a woman that didn’t look good in a tux.
Great to see these ladies coming out in defense of Ceara.
Did the people in Mississippi ever see a Marlene Dietrich movie?! What’s wong wis you peoples?
THIS MOMENTOUS DAY!
Not one day in anyone’ life is an uneventful day, no day without profound meaning, no matter how dull and boring it might seem, no matter whether you are a seamstress or a queen, a shoeshine boy or a movie star, a renowned philosopher or a Down’ syndrome child.
Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others, both by conscious acts of will and unconscious example.
Each smallest act of kindness — even just words of hope when they are needed, the remembrance of a birthday, a compliment that engenders a smile — reverberates across great distances and spans of time, affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’ passed, until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away.
Likewise, each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will.
All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined — those dead, those living, those generations yet to come — that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands.
Therefore, after every failure, we are obliged to strive again for success, and when faced with the end of one thing, we must build something new and better in the ashes, just as from pain and grief, we must weave hope, for each of us is a thread critical to the strength — the very survival — of the human tapestry.
Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days for which we, in our dissatisfaction, so often yearn are already with us; all great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in THIS MOMENTOUS DAY! — Rev. H.R. White
Excerpt from Dean Koontz’ book, “From the Corner of His Eye”.
It embodies the idea of how the smallest of acts can have such a profound effect on each of our lives.
[...] have been touring together this year. You might remember, earlier this year, when Janelle Monae took to Twitter to express solidarity with girls like Constance McMillen and Ceara Sturgis, who just wanted to wear their tuxes and go to [...]