Friday, March 12, 2010

LESSONS LEARNED FROM CONSTANCE McMILLEN'S EXPERIENCE WITH HOMOPHOBIA



[Thanks to Towleroad.]

It's a tragedy for a young Gay person like Constance to have to suffer discrimination for merely wanting to be authentic, and take her girlfriend to the prom; be put in the position where she is blamed by other students for the prom being cancelled.

It's also a tragedy when a school board can cancel a prom that means so much to the high school graduates and cynically state that Constance wanting to take her girlfriend to the prom was not the reason for the cancellation. The statement by the school board that it wouldn't host the event "due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events" but didn't mention McMillen, is disingenuous on its face. Apparently, "the educational process" they advocate is discrimination against Gay people!

Thank God for good parents:

McMillen said she didn't want to go back to the high school in Fulton the morning after the decision, but her father told her she needed to face her classmates.

"My daddy told me that I needed to show them that I'm still proud of who I am," McMillen told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "The fact that this will help people later on, that's what's helping me to go on."
(See here.)

There is a lesson to be learned here, in addition to the need for us to teach children to be authentic. The major venue for acquiring equality for LGBT people is in the courts!

Forget about trying to appeal to "the milk of human kindness" as we've pathetically seen in having Prop. 8 and other such propositions put to a vote of the electorate!

Most money and energy must be put to fighting for equality in the courts!
Share |

4 comments:

genevieve said...

Lame excuse from the school administration. I admire Constance's father for having her return to school. I believe that other gay and lesbian students will be encouraged by her willingness to be herself.

I agree with you that equality will be achieved through the courts.

Jerry Maneker said...

Hi genevieve: The schools and universities with which I'm familiar are largely populated by what I consider to be moral cowards, so it's no surprise that that school board spoke the way it did.

God bless her father for teaching her a lesson about being authentic! If all parents acted that way, there would be a whole lot less shame and self-loathing, and suicides, among LGBT youth. Best wishes, Jerry.

DC HAMPTON JACOBS said...

I hope Ms. McMillen is symbolic of the next generation of LGBT youth. I don't want them to be like today's generation, who whine about bigotry but basically do nothing to combat it.

Jerry Maneker said...

AMEN, Don Charles!