Janelle Monae is one of the coolest artists out there right now.  She’s like Erykah Badu’s brilliant and slightly off-kilter little sister, a comparison that makes sense when you consider the fact that the two artists 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 their proms in peace.  Janelle, of course, often wears a tux when she performs, and she looks damn good.  I guess there’s some speculation out there about her sexuality (who cares?), but she did an interview with Rolling Stone the other day where she explained, “I only date androids.  Nothing like an android — they don’t cheat on you.”  The answer might not make sense if you’re not a fan, but Janelle has created an entire world around her music, and yes, it involves androids.

“Mushrooms & Roses” is one of my favorite songs from her new record, The ArchAndroid, and it’s more evidence that Janelle Monae can write and perform any genre of music you want, and it will be awesome.  So let’s start the shuffle with that.  More videos after the jump. Open thread slash confessional booth below.

1.  Rufus Wainwright – “April Fools”
2. The Beatles – “Fool on the Hill”
3. Frank Sinatra – “Luck Be A Lady”
4. Glen Phillips – “Crowing”
5. Cry Cry Cry – “The Kid”
6. Jane Siberry – “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree”
7. Josh Ritter – “The Curse”
8. Ron Sexsmith – “One Last Round”
9. Tori Amos – “Almost Rosey”
10. U2 – “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)”

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Lisa Derrick posted this story about Derrek Lutz, who is going to prom with a female friend this evening. That part would pass in Mississippi, but this kid from Cape May, New Jersey, will be wearing a dress:

A New Jersey student, who is a cross-dresser, spoke to Eyewitness News about his fight to go to the prom in a knee-length black dress and heels.

“Yea, I’m a cross dresser,” said student Derrek Lutz.

(…)

Lutz had no worries until he was told Thursday that wearing the dress to the prom would violate the school’s dress code.

“I was asked to go to the principal’s office,” Lutz said. “Basically, he just said I couldn’t wear a dress to prom.”

(…)

“What makes me a woman is inside and it doesn’t really matter what’s on the outside. And everyone should really just be treated equally,” Lutz said.

So Lutz planned to show up with his female date, not to protest, but to participate in the festivities however he could.

But!

In the meantime, his friends started a petition and collected more than 600 signatures. Hundreds more joined a Facebook page created and titled: “Let Derrek Lutz Wear A Dress To Prom.”

In response, the school’s principal told Eyewitness News: “There was a discussion between the principal and a student. That discussion was taken to other parties in the district and the issue was resolved.”

That is so awesome.

The reason that stories like Constance McMillen and Ceara Sturgis in Mississippi have been such big stories is, in part, because we have already prevailed in the fight for equality among the voters who actually will be deciding the course of this nation, i.e. those under 30. In New Jersey, an entire class got together to fight for one of their friends to be able to express himself in a way that harms no one, but is genuine for him.

Here’s to wishing those kids a fantastic prom.

Well, it looks like the “good folks” at Itawamba Agricultural have struck fear into other random counties in Mississippi, with the way they set the bar for good old Southern Christian gay-hatin’. Apparently worried that their pictures wouldn’t appear in the dictionary next to the “bigot” entry, Copiah County, Mississippi has submitted a gay-hatin’ entry of their own:

When Veronica Rodriguez opened Wesson Attendance Center’s Yearbook on Friday, she didn’t find a trace of her lesbian daughter Ceara Sturgis after a long battle with school officials to include a photo of her daughter wearing a tuxedo in the school’s 2010 yearbook.
“They didn’t even put her name in it,” Sturgis’ mother Veronica Rodriguez said. “I was so furious when she told me about it. Ceara started crying and I told her to suck it up. Is that not pathetic for them to do that? Yet again, they have crapped on her and made her feel alienated.”

Sturgis and her mother commissioned the Mississippi ACLU to protest officials’ October 2009 decision not to allow Sturgis’ photo to appear in the senior yearbook because she chose to wear a tuxedo instead of a dress.

The ACLU wrote an October letter demanding officials use Sturgis’ submitted photo in the yearbook, but Copiah County School District officials refused. Rodriguez said she expected the yearbook to at least contain a reference to her daughter on the senior page. What she discovered on Friday, when the yearbook came in, was that the school had refused to acknowledge her entirely.

“It’s like she’s nobody there, even though she’s gone to school there for 12 years,” Rodriguez said. “They mentioned none of her accolades, even though she’s one of the smartest students there with wonderful grades. They’ve got kids in the book that have been busted for drugs. There’s even a picture of one of the seniors who dropped out of school.

“I don’t get it. Ceara is a top student. Why would they do this to her?”

Yee-haw!

And of course Ceara is an honors student. Constance McMillen is an honors student. Derrick Martin, in Cochran, Georgia, is an honors student. (Derrick was, of course, treated better by his school district, but unfortunately treated awfully by his “parents.”) And pardon me for sensing that there’s a bit of anti-intellectual resentment going on here, because not only are these kids gay, but they’re also smart. Because if anything threatens a backwoods Southerner more than blacks, gays, women, Mexicans, Muslims, books, museums, etc., it’s when these people and things are ascendant. As in, it’s one thing for gays to exist, as long as we’re behind closed doors and not bothering the idiots around us. It’s one thing for black people to live in the same town, as long as they stay over there, in smaller, shabbier houses. It’s one thing for Mexicans to immigrate to the United States, but goddammit, if they have to press 1 for English, they’re gonna spit. It’s one thing for museums to exist, but if they don’t have any wax statues of Jefferson Davis and Chuck Norris paying homage to an animatronic Jesus galloping into Jerusalem on top of his favorite Triceratops…

The point is that again, it all goes back to these people (teabaggers, many of them, and you know it) having the floor ripped out from under their illusions that, by virtue of their white skin and faith in Jesus, they are the “real” citizens of this nation, and that the rest of us are just people they allow to squat. They’re realizing that the rest of the country is on to their game, and that with every passing day, the culture is moving more and more out of “their” era, and that their worldview is truly becoming the laughingstock of educated society. Never mind that “their” era has remained stubbornly in 1954 or so for 56 years now.

Dan Savage has the contact info for the administrators at Wesson Attendance Center. They need to hear from us.

By the way, PZ Myers reported this afternoon that Fred Phelps and his feral children are going to be protesting Constance McMillen’s graduation, and he asks a good question:

This will be very interesting … how will the town and her fellow students respond? Will they be cheering the Phelpsians on, or will they finally get a good look in the mirror?

The answer is probably C, unfortunately. They’ll buck back and forth and holler about how they’re just standing up for traditional values, and how they Are. NOT. Like. Those. God. Hates. Fags. People., but are victims just the same, of the evil wily gays, who are of course being abetted by the East Coast Liberal Elites and the College Professors and the Marxists and the Moose-lems and the ACLU (correctomundo on that count), and of course, Katie Couric and probably Hollywood. At least three people in the town will blame it on George Soros, god only knows why.

The poor little dears are just misunderstood, you see, and they view us as suspect because we can’t see the various boogeymen who live in their closets. And through it all, they’ll find a way to blame it on the kids who dared to stand up for themselves, for to these people, kids like Constance and Ceara aren’t humans at all, but rather notches for their bedposts of wingnut resentment.

Take heart, though, Ceara, Constance, and every other kid in Mississippi who finds herself to be intelligent, driven, and a minority in any way: there is a greater world outside waiting for you, and y’all have a better chance to get out than any of the knuckle-draggers who feel threatened by you.

Big thanks to the Memphis Gay & Lesbian Community Center are in order, for Constance McMillen will be going to a real prom after all:
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Bryan Safi takes on the story of Constance McMillen in his latest episode of “That’s Gay.”

Enjoy.

Look, y’all. We all know that the writers at GayPatriot are self-loathing, awful people, indeed, embarrassments to LGBT people everywhere. In the past 24 hours, the “Daniel Blatt” one was one of the only wingnuts on the entire internet to have a problem with Obama granting visitation rights to same-sex couples. Indeed, his post on the subject was so grotesque that Tintin at Sadly, No!, usually one of the greatest snark blogs EVER, dispensed with all silliness to throw down one of the most memorable, spot-on smackdowns I’ve seen in recent months. I won’t quote it here because this is a family blog, but suffice it to say that everything he said is true, and then some.

But now, the “ColoradoPatriot” one, who thinks he’s clever when he talks about the “Stalinization of healthcare,” as if that phrase reverberates anywhere except for the hall of mirrors he uses to have circle jerks with himself, has decided that you know what? Constance McMillen sucks: (Read More)

Bruce wrote yesterday about the awful chapter of the Constance McMillen story that just concluded. After being assured that the prom thrown by parents would be welcome to everyone, the students and parents decided to let pig ignorance and cruelty win the day, their little kudzu-like black souls determined to stamp out any good that could have come from the situation: No one attended the prom at the country club, instead choosing to leave Constance and the disabled kids at that prom while they went to another, unofficial prom. Great job, bigots!

I’m talking to the children, but only halfway. But I’m really talking to the parents. Every single one of you has proven yourself to be unfit to be raising children in the year 2010 in a first world nation. The fact that you allowed your kids to participate in this act of unmitigated gall and cruelty is repugnant. That kind of shit might have passed for parenting during the Crusades, or back when you were a slave state, but not anymore. Anyway, way to teach your kids to hate people who are different from them! That’ll take them far in this world. (No. It won’t. It’ll keep them stuck in Fulton, where brain cells apparently go to die.)

So yeah, this Southern writer is disgusted, as is pretty much every other Southerner for whom a trip to Wal-Mart is an annoyance rather than a vacation.

Another Southern writer is approaching this differently, and I think we could all learn something from the truly admirable compassion she is trying to feel for these idiots. Perhaps it’s because she’s a Mom, and she’s able to speak to it from that perspective. You may be familiar with Jenny the Bloggess. If you’re not, take a moment to subscribe to her feed this instant, and thank me later. She’s usually the most reliably funny read on the entire internet; she’s bent, twisted, and wonderful. But tonight, she’s singing a different tune:

I know people who are intolerant or homophobic or full of fear or hate. And some of them I love in spite of it. I can’t help it. But I still have to say something even if it hurts them to read it.

You are wrong.

Our differences are what make us strong, what makes us unique and special. Fighting intolerance about mental illness, or race, or lifestyle or whatever labeled “flaw” we are saddled with makes us strong. And today instead of using my strength to say how much I hate every single person that thought that this horrible act of cruelty was in any way acceptable to do to a human being I’m using it to do something so much harder. I’m using it to say that I still love you. And that I hope for change. And that I know that I am imperfect and I am changing and that I hope you can too. Because I don’t want to live in a world where so many people send me emails of desperation and despair because they think that a girl on the internet they’ve never met is the only one who could ever understand them. These people? The ones emailing me who feel that their life is worthless? They are your children. They are the people we see every day. They are the men and women who will one day care for us when we’re old and feeble and can’t stand up for ourselves anymore.

They. are. us.

Yeah, Fulton. Everybody whose words you’re reading right now has a Southern accent and says “y’all” a lot. Deal with it.

Jenny finishes her post like this:

A special note to every single person reading this who thinks that they are alone or different or forever broken…you are not. You are part of a special tribe that you just haven’t found yet and we need you. All the best people are broken. Keep fighting until you find your place. It does exist. I promise.

And that was when Jenny made me cry. (Damn her for that, by the way.)

It’s amazing that there are everyday heroes out there fielding letters from depressed, broken kids. I’ve fielded a few in my time, but I can imagine that Jenny fields a lot, because of what she stands for and the way she spills her soul (hilariously) day in/day out; it’s likely made her a trusted confidant for many more hurting kids than she’d ever tell you. But it’s sick that people on the internet have to be stand-in parents and confidants for kids because their parents won’t support them. You know?

Anyway. Thanks, Jenny for taking a night off from the funny to give us all that message.

In many areas in the country, the strength of the opposition to LGBT people and rights is directly correlated to the number of Early Bird specials in that area. In other words, it’s generational. Even in Evangelical circles in many areas, the kids just don’t care about hating gay people like their parents and grandparents do. They know better. Unfortunately, Fulton, Mississippi, home of Constance McMillen, is not yet one of those places. As is so often the case in Mississippi and surrounding states, rural residents are so sheltered from the outside world that they haven’t gotten the message that discrimination against gay people isn’t okay. Many of them, quite frankly, haven’t gotten the message that discrimination against black people is not okay!

Fulton, Mississippi, is only two hours from the sprawling metropolis of Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis is solid blue country, represented in the House of Representatives by Steve Cohen, who may be the coolest member of Congress. As a Wonkette commenter said the other day, “He’s from Memphis and votes like he’s from Vermont.” And his seat is safe!*

Fulton is also just over an hour from Oxford, Mississippi, a small town which, though distinctly Southern, is also a smart, liberal college town with an amazing live music scene and it’s a haven of sorts for authors, all the way back to William Faulkner, who made his home there. Oxford, basically, is awesome, a glimmer of hope in what is otherwise a wasteland.

But you see, in much of rural South, distance should never be measured by miles, for you or I could drive down the highway through and past Southern towns, we could stop at their diners, but we would not actually be in the same place as the locals at the next table over. No, distance in the rural South is often more accurately measured in decades. The joke about Atlanta and many other large cities in the South is that you go back ten years as you leave each successive county, as suburbs fade into exurbs into straight-up country. Like most jokes of that sort, it’s funny because it’s true. For cities with less insane sprawl than Atlanta, the time machine effect is even more jarring. I’d venture to say that going South from Memphis into Mississippi, you hit 1950 before you’ve used a quarter tank of gas.

All of that background goes to say, for those who aren’t that familiar with the area, that I’m not surprised that this is happening:

The school board’s response states that parents have organized a private prom at a furniture mart in nearby Tupleo [sic]. Now that the school district has withdrawn from the event, any constitutional claims are irrelevant, Griffith wrote. [American Civil Liberties Union attorney Christine] Sun said she had only heard rumors of the private dance until she read it in the brief.

“Constance has not been invited, so it is clear to me that what is happening is that the school has encouraged a private prom that is not open to all the students,” she said. “That’s what Constance is fighting for‚Äîa prom where everyone can go.”

On one discussion on an Internet bulletin board about the planned prom in Tupelo, a poster who identified himself as a junior at the high school said the prom would be “invitation only.”

“Constance and her gay-activist friends will not be attending,” he said. “They can go have their own prom because we certainly do not want any of them there.”

The poster expressed frustration at the attention the issue had brought to the city of about 4,000.

If this had happened in Memphis, we would most likely be hearing a very different story. An alternate prom would have been organized, all right, but very likely it would be a specifically inclusive prom. There are pockets of wingnut in the Memphis area, to be sure, and I’m not saying there would be no bellyaching from those quarters. But even in the suburbs, I’m fairly certain that if a large public high school pulled any of the crap the Itawamba County school board has, fairness would win, and the students would be on the right side of the matter, for the most part.

Dan Savage has much more on this, including the bitching and moaning of the school board’s attorney, James Keith, that the board members have been under “tremendous pressure,” even going so far as receiving phone calls and Facebook messages from mean supporters of fairness and equality all over the country! As Dan said, file that under “boo hoo hoo.”

The thing about 2010, with our interwebs and our technology and whatnot, is that places like Fulton, Mississippi may hope against hope that they can remain in 1956, where they like it, where they feel safe. But they can no longer be guaranteed that the bright light of reality will never intervene in their calm. And thank god for that, really. Because the thing is, there are kids like Constance McMillen all over the Dirty South, and there are kids like Constance in the “Alabama” parts of Pennsylvania and Idaho. From sea to shining sea, as they say. And while the intervention of reality may be greeted like so many burs in the ass cracks of the wingnuts who populate places like Fulton, who pine for the days when “Whites Only” was more than just a fading memory, those kids, many of them living in silence and fear, can take comfort in the fact that the real world is out there, and that they’re not alone.

*(There’s an obnoxious primary challenge going on, but we won’t get into that. The point is that when Steve runs against a Republican in Memphis, he steamrolls them, then he backs up and steamrolls them again.)

(!!!)

I think Constance is just great.

There’s a great moment in this interview when Constance explains that she was rebuffed from wearing a tuxedo to the prom by a vice principal who explained that it wasn’t that big of a deal for a girl to wear a tux, you see, but if a guy showed up in a dress…

Ellen says, “Because…what would happen?” and then, making fun of the morons who actually think such things, waves her hands around and says “ALL HELL WOULD BREAK LOOSE!”

Any person who actually believes such a thing is a weak excuse for a “person” indeed.

(h/t Dan Savage)

Because of the amazing Constance McMillen, Miss’sippi’s been all over the news lately, showing everybody their commitment to, as Wanda Sykes said, always “be on the forefront of the wrong side of history.” Well, one of Miss’sippi’s finest brains apparently got a stick in his craw about all the mean lie’bruls making fun of them, and wrote atheist science blogger P.Z. Myers a letter. I think you’ll agree it’s a true exposition of genius:

Mr. Myers:

I live in north Mississippi and the way that you and other liberals criticize small town America is deplorable. You know nothing of this town nor my state. Of course I am proud of the people in my state for standing up for what is right.

You call it “human rights” for a man to dress like a woman and act silly and for a woman to dress like a man and act like she has a pecker when she does not. Most nomral people call it sick and realize it is sin. Of course the days of 1967 may have caused permanent brain damage that the next generation inherited. This explans most liberal policies, or anti-establishment policies I call it.

Explanation for liberalism = men “acting silly” and dressing like women and women “acting like they have peckers.” Awesome. And 1967 was bad. Loving v. Virginia and whatnot. I want more of this letter:

The plain fact is this: Why can liberals not accept that a man does not wear a dress and that a woman does not wear a tuxedo and ask another woman to prom, or other engagement? Can you ot see what is wrong with that picture? Your claim to fame is that you use reason. What reason? Your reason? What about the truth? The truth and reality prevails over your “reason” Mr. Myers.

And in my version of reality, evurbody wars what thur s’posta war!

Satan is on a role in America and his minions are affecting every core element of society.

Yes, I believe he’s playing the role of Elizabeth Hasselbeck, last time I checked. Type-casting. What’s a dark lord gotta do to be a leading lady in this town?

There are those of us who have sworn an oath to destroy evil in this world and to slay Satan and his ideals which includes witchcraft, idolatry, paganism, homosexuality, etc.

Wolverines!

I’d like to take a moment to point out that that last sentence definitely does not bring to mind Magic: The Gathering or LARPing, in any way, shape or form. Absolutely not.

Homoseuality was wrong 6000 years ago after Adam sinned. It was wrong 3500 years ago when God wiped Sodom and Gomorrah from the face of the Earth for their homosexual satanic lusts.

Wait. What kind of wingnut pop-up Bible is Bubba reading, because MY fourteen Bibles seem to have about fifteen verses a-piece which all explain that the sin of Sodom was inhospitality and greed? You actually have to actively ignore most of the verses in the Bible that talk about Sodom to pretend it was about gay people. (Bible lesson from an atheist #3 if you’re counting)

The Bible predicted a day when men would see evil as good and good as evil. That day has come and those who have fulfilled this evil will be punished along with the demons who influenced these actions.

Team Edward? Team Jacob? He’s talking to both of y’all, and he’s not happy.

You, sir know nothing of the values of my culture, my heritage.

Time out! In case any of you reading are not Southern, I am, so allow me to explain that when a Southerner says “heritage,” they tend to be talking about “the good ole’ days when the nigras knew their place.” In case you didn’t know.

If you like your sodomy so much, then please set up a seperate state for it so that the sodomites can go there to be destroyed rather than bring destruction on the rest of us who do not tolerate it.

What, you mean like the blue states which subsidize Miss’sippi’s wingnut welfare existence with their abundant tax dollars? The ones where the kids are smarter and the married couples divorce less and the abortion and teen pregnancy rates are lower, and the violent crime rates are…well, you get the idea.

Oh yeah. You already have. California is a breeding ground for Satanic forces. Sodomy, prositution, gayism, witchcraft, paganism, liberalism, socialism, communism, etc all prevails there

Senator Ashburn, Bubba’s looking at you.

I hope you get saved, becuase you have caused many people to go astray and turn evil. Punishment for this will not be a light entence. Being evil yourself is bad enough, but when you cause young minds to stray from God, you received 100 fold the punishment due to you.

Better luck next time. Though. Come visit us in small town Mississippi. You might learn something – like what it means to be normal.

Sincerely,

Your most famous non-admirer

I skipped so many lines, so you need to go read the whole thing. But wait, “most famous”? P.Z. says his name was “rob1,” but there are only three famous people I can think of who live in North Mississippi. (There could be more, but they’re not coming to mind.) Jerry Lee Lewis. Morgan Freeman. John Grisham. I’m having a hard time believing any of them could be “rob1,” so I’m guessing this fool is more of a “local celebrity,” a la employee of the month at the Steak ‘n’ Shake.

Oh, and you really should read P.Z.’s response to Bubba McGoo. He’s trying to be nicer these days, and I think he made a valiant effort. So click the clicky!

And Constance, I know Wanda Sykes laughed a little bit when you said you were going to move to Tennessee after college, but you’re right — once you cross that border, it’s like you’ve entered a whole new level of civilization. (As long as you aim for the big city on the other side of that border. The “Memphis” one. If you aim too far to the right, you end up in a place called Finger, which is, um, not really an improvement. No offense to any dear friends of mine who happen to have been raised in Fain-ger.)

Anyway, I’m going to go and act silly and show some ladies how to pretend they have peckers now.