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.
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.
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.
Your task, if you choose to accept it (and you will if you know what’s good for you *hrmph*):
I wrote (and everybody else wrote too) about the school board in Itawamba County, Mississippi, which chose to punish an entire school by canceling the prom, rather than treating everyone equally and letting a lesbian student bring a girl as her date. Everyone should be able to attend the prom with the person they want to go with, and if you happen to be in a high school romance, you definitely want to go with your significant other. We all remember those times.
So here’s what you need to do:
1. If you haven’t joined the Facebook group, do so. That’s the easy part.
2. Write a nice, heartfelt, firm e-mail (or make a phone call) to the members of that school board. There’s no need to yell at them. This is a time for them to hear our voices clearly, with a tough sort of love. We’re defending this kid here. Let’s act like it. (Righteous indignation is FINE.)
All right, you have your assignments. Get to it, my babies!
UPDATE:
Two things. First, here’s a petition you can sign asking the school board to reverse their decision. Second, I’ve decided to post the letter I sent here as well. If you’re having trouble knowing where to start, feel free to use it as a guide:
Dear Sirs and Madams:
You’ve all received hundreds of e-mails at this point about your decision to cancel the Itawamba Agricultural High School prom. I’m glad. Those e-mails have been from straight, gay and lesbian people from all over the country (and possibly the world). I’m also a writer and spokesperson for a national gay rights organization called Truth Wins Out, and we see firsthand the trauma that gay and lesbian kids deal with just trying to fit in in a world that often sees them as different. Look, we all have our beliefs. I respect that, and this is the United States, where we are given the freedom of those beliefs. But we are not given the freedom to impose our personal beliefs on others. I’d like you to consider something for me: Of all the “moral issues” facing this country, why does this one divide so many? And why is it that those most likely to be supportive are those who actually know gay people the best? There is a reason the younger generations are, in large majorities, supportive of LGBT people. They’ve grown up with gay and lesbian aunts, uncles, moms, dads, teachers, coaches, neighbors, friends, classmates, etc., and they know something many in the older generations do not. They know that we are no different, qualitatively, than they are. In fact, they know that we’re part of the exact same fabric they are. Because of their firsthand experience, they also know that much of what they may have been taught about who gay people are, what gay people are like, etc., simply isn’t true. All over the country, and yes, even in the South, gay kids are striving and thriving just like their straight peers. Just down the road from you in Memphis, gay kids have been taking their same gender dates to proms (in the suburbs!) for years now. And you know what? It’s turned out okay. Give your kids a chance to have the same opportunities to experience their prom in a way they’ll remember fondly.
Frankly, I expected better from the adults in the situation. Children rely on us to set a good example, and the example you’ve set says that it’s okay to punish a whole group for the (perceived) sins of one, and you’ve also shown them how to scapegoat an innocent person for the crimes of others. And let me let you in on a little secret, folks: Constance isn’t the only LGBT person at that school. You may not realize it, and the students may not realize it, but numbers don’t lie. There are gay boys and lesbian girls in that class, but they’re scared to come out. You’ve shown them this week that they have a reason to fear. You’ve shown them that the adults in their lives don’t have their backs, and for some, you’ve confirmed their fears that they’re alone in this world. You’ve now actively encouraged a climate of cruelty, of fear, of bullying, and of violence with your ill-conceived decision.
As I said before, we hear the stories on the other side. Some of them have happy endings. Others do not.
I’m usually the snarky one who’s not fazed by wingnut nonsense, but this is disgusting:
If you’re a high school in Mississippi and you really don’t want your students bringing same-sex dates to the prom, what are you to do?
Well, you could try to ban them from coming to the prom, although that’s illegal. Or, if you’re the Itawamba Agricultural High School, you can cancel the prom altogether and punish everyone. That’s right. No gay couples. No straight couples. No prom.
Isn’t it amazing the depths folks will go in order to continue homophobic policies? That this school wanted to stop a lesbian student from bringing a same-sex date to the prom was outrageous enough. But to cancel the entire prom just to take aim at this student is punishing every single person in the school. So much for school’s acting in the best interests of their students.
The school is called Itawamba Agricultural High School. So I have two questions for the Itawamba County School Board:
1. Exactly how many self-loathing closet cases are on your board? Because this is extreme, even for Mississippi.
2. What’s wrong, Mississippi? Were you worried that Virginia was out-wingnutting you this week, and you had to do something grotesque to prove that you’re the dumbest, most unreconstructed bigots in the Union?
Later in the above quoted piece, we hear from the lesbian student:
The student at the heart of this case is a senior named Constance McMillen. Reached by the Clarion Ledger, McMillen said she was absolutely disgusted that her school would try to punish her by canceling the prom for everyone.
“Oh, my God. That’s really messed up because the message they are sending is that if they have to let gay people go to prom that they are not going to have one,” she said. “A bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this, so in a way it’ really retaliation.”
Oh, but we’re supposed to believe that the Wingnut Right really cares about bullying of LGBT students? No, as Timothy Kincaid pointed out last year, some of their leading “pro-family” voices indeed view bullying LGBT students as a Christian duty.
They are the true sick people. Not happy, healthy LGBT people. We’re fine.
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