Mississippi High School Says No to Gay and Learning Disabled Students

The details coming out of Fulton, Mississippi are enough to turn anyone's stomach a little sour. There was 18-year-old lesbian student Constance McMillen, who sued for the right to take her girlfriend to prom. Her school, Itawamba Agricultural High School, refused to budge, saying that gay students would make others feel uncomfortable. A judge ruled that McMillen had a right to attend the prom with her peers, but by that point, it was almost too late. The school had canceled the official prom.

An alternative prom was scheduled on April 2, with Constance invited to attend. It was supposed to be an event for the entire school, yet when Constance got there, only seven other students were there. In what essentially amounts to a prank more "meaner" than "Mean Girls," Constance's classmates, in tandem with their parents and allegedly some school officials, tricked Constance, as well as several students with learning disabilities, into attending a sham prom, while they all got together at an alternative location to celebrate the end of their high school year.

Remember that scene in "Carrie," where the high school girl gets a bucket of pig's blood dumped on her during a prom prank? You can now officially replace that image with the folks at Itawamba Agricultural High when it comes to mean and sinister prom pranks.

Scores of folks have been covering this since it emerged that the prom Constance attended was a sham. Some have even drawn comparisons to an incident that happened 45 years ago, where an African American student in Birmingham, Carolyn Tasmiya King-Miller, was duped into attending a fake prom because her classmates didn't like the fact that she was a person of color. The comparisons seem to fit.

Now, in the wake of widespread criticism, students at the school are trying to justify their prom prank. As one student who commented at firedoglake tried to explain it, "We wanted a drama-free gathering to celebrate 3 great years and 1 lousy one together, and we wanted to lay low. We also wanted to do it without the main cause of the lousy (sic). What people are failing to realize is that much of the fault of this whole stink lies with Constance, not her mistreatment by the school district, but her crazy-reckless need for attention. It sounds mean and horrible and like we planned it all specifically to embarrass Constance, but we didn’t. We let her have her prom with her girlfriend and her tuxedo and we went to party it up in the 'boondocks' not because we wanted her rights violated, but so we could salvage what has turned into a total fiasco."

Yes, blame Constance. How dare she ask the school months in advance if she can bring her girlfriend that she cares about to prom. What in the world was she thinking?

The real fiasco here is the culture that allows the student above to write that comment without feeling even a tinge of remorse. "It's Constance's fault for being gay," the student might as well have written. And let's be clear here: the homophobia at the root of this student's statement is pervasive at Itawamba Agricultural High School. As Dan Savage pointed out a few weeks ago, Itawamba Agricultural High had a history before Constance McMillen of discriminating against LGBT students, including expelling a transgender student.

Years ago I had a religious professor that told us, "Where you stand in this world determines what you see." And when you stand in a community where school administrators label LGBT people as gross or a group to disenfranchise, it's no wonder that students at the school don't think they've done anything wrong.

And it doesn't end there. Lost in the coverage of this event, and what Pam Spaulding points out so well on her blog, is that it wasn't just Constance McMillen who was the brunt of this prom joke. It was also a group of learning disabled students, who were told to go to the sham prom.

"To think that Fulton not only displayed rank homophobia, it raised the bar of evil by sending learning-disabled students to the fake prom, clearly labeling them 'others,'" Spaulding writes. "I challenge any of these 'Christians' in Fulton to cite where in the bible Jesus teaches that the physically or mentally challenged deserve to be outcasts."

They'll be looking in the Bible for a long time for that one, as well as for passages that suggest it's "Christian" to discriminate against LGBT people. (Here's a word to the wise: Jesus never said anything about homosexuality. But he did say a whole hell of a lot about loving your neighbor, and even loving your enemies).

Firedoglake called Itawamba Agricultural High School the meanest school in America yesterday. In the wake of this incident, it's really hard not to agree.

Photo credit: Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to the Prom!