photo courtesy of the blog, insurgent49.
McMillen: I Was Sent To Fake Prom
If you don't care to follow the link, or haven't heard about this brave, smart, and very wise young woman, I will give you a quick run-down. Constance McMillen, a student at Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton, Mississippi, wanted to attend her prom like her classmates. She just happened to want to bring her girlfriend. So, in a shining display of maturity and panache, the school cancelled the prom altogether for fear of them gays. (Sort of.)
What then occurred, amid an uproar from the ACLU (I'm a member myself. I know, you're shocked), was that the school "reinstated" the prom, allowing Constance to bring her same-sex date. Well, sort of.
What happened is that the parents of the students who happened not to identify as LGBT, decided to throw a private prom elsewhere. Presumably, considering the way McMillen describes her evening at a country club in Fulton, MIssissippi, the school administration was fully aware that there was a second prom in the works. Seven people attended the official prom.
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]."Constance McMillen is a bright, kind, compassionate young woman who took a stand for her own rights. Regardless of her obvious wisdom-beyond-her-years, and her ability to cope, I am having a really tough time with this. And it's not simply because McMillen essentially missed her chance to attend her prom.
What makes me sad - makes me cry, actually - is that the adults in this situation are teaching bigotry and hate. They are actively participating in the exclusion and social ostracizing of a girl simply because she is different. And they are TEACHING THIS TO THEIR CHILDREN. Or rather, I'm quite sure their children have already learned all of this by high school age, and these parents are simply reinforcing these practices.
I feel sorry for everyone involved. I feel angry at the parents and administrators. I have an urge to take the other Itawamba students by the shoulders and shake them until I shake out the hatred (it's a very scientific process, mind you), or even transfer it to me. At least through the shaking, I would have done something worth being pissed off about.
It's that we can so easily influence and change the way young minds think and operate, especially in the age of constant communication, which worries me. Young minds are pliable and malleable in ways we easily forget when we grow up.
When I was a frosh at school, I had to take a public speaking course. Since there were around 25 of us in the class, we were assigned days. I think this was a Tuesday-Thursday class, if I'm not mistaken. On the first day, a girl I knew through a friend gave a speech railing incoherently - violently, even - against homosexuality, gay marriage, and adoption by same-sex couples. (Logical and coherent arguments, unfortunately, were not a requirement in this course.) I was flabbergasted. I had no idea she felt this way.
"But, but... She was raised in oh-so cosmopolitan Chicago!" My brain shouted. "How can she be so small-minded?!"
I later learned that she was home-schooled by her parents, which clearly indicated to me that she had been taught to hate. But I went home that night a re-wrote my entire speech to counter-argue against her points. I had planned to write about how punk music of the '70s had changed popular rock forever, but that seemed somewhat less necessary. I needed to show how morally corrupt her arguments were.
When the class convened again, I gave my speech. I calmly and pointedly dissected her arguments in my own way. Never calling her points out as the bigotry they were, but simply eliciting the idea that her religious justifications for hate had no place in a secular society, as I insist the United States is in theory, if not practice.
Without tooting my own horn too much, I can honestly say I cleaned the floor with her crazypants arguments. I paid for that.
Walking back to my dorm that evening after hitting the convenience store across the street from campus to buy my then-very much desired Marlboro Reds, I heard the rev of an engine behind me. I was on the sidewalk, so not concerned, but the large black SUV with tinted windows seemed to be waiting for me. The vehicle crept up behind me and a window rolled down. The girl so full of hate screamed "FUCK QUEERS" at me, while an unseen friend in the back seat lobbed a full bottle of soda at me. I managed to duck. They sped away. All I could do in retaliation was throw up the one-finger salute, and trudge back to my dorm, slightly soggier than before.
I was stunned by this whole episode. She and her friends were, for all intents and purposes, still children. This hatred was taught. And moreover, I received the brunt of it, simply for proving her argument against homosexuality false. You secretly always know that there is such vitriol and hate out there, but it still can shock you. The story still surprises me, especially when I discovered that if there was one person I hated in this world on a personal level, it was her. And that makes me sad, too. Hate breeds hate, and conversations end.
Constance McMillen's story, however, leaves me with an immense amount of hope. She has not fallen prey to hating others. And she knows, in a way many will never understand, that it is the bigots who will suffer the indignities of hating and the empty lives of those who are perpetually afraid of The Other. Constance is a heroine for so many reasons, and she is one to me.
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