What a bunch of childish kill-joys. What people will do to spoil everyone's fun. Alas I agree with #2. It's time to move on. They were party poopers, they know it and no amount of litigation is going to change them. Sigh.

@102 The point of litigation at this point wouldn't be to change them, but to punish them. The punishment will HAVE to be financially harsh, as to discourage this from happening ever again. Otherwise they win and they'll do this to anyone else who dares be different than them.

Dang this situation sucks. Poor Constance and others to have been willfully and cruelly deceived, that was cold. Yet, I can't help but weep at Constance's description of her fellow party goes, They had the time of their lives". And, that she, with all her courage, grace and compassion, was there with them. So, I hope long after this has passed, and the sting of cruelty fades, that the beauty of her Prom Night will shine. As a night filled with joy, acceptance and celebration. Those are the memories you want to carry with you through life.

It's really telling that they excluded the special needs kids. These people -- the administrators, the teachers, the parents, the kids, all of them -- are scum.

@107: Show us your source for your assertion that homosexuals are twelve times as likely to catch HIV (you cannot give someone AIDS) than Mississippians. You like to bang on and on about shit without ever backing anything up.

@109: The ignorance charge is the result of this particular sample of Mississippians having their heads too far up their asses to accept people different from them, a condition sadly common in the South.
The whole HIV/AIDS (I wish Alleged would figure out the difference between the two) topic came up after the idiot(s) known as Alleged started talking about how Mississippians are far superior to us highfalutin' carpetbagging Yankees. I believe that all people are born equal, but it seems like a hell of a lot of us, especially in rural areas, have only gone downhill from there.
I've seen you around here before, Peregrine. Why not register?

If virtually every child went, then it wasn't a 'secret prom'.

@ 56 - No. Not the bigotry, the response. It's small towns that are closely knit enough to band together and organize to fuck someone else over. You don't get that kind of coordination and cohesion in a larger group. If you're on a small town's good side, fucking awesome. If you're not, you're in deep shit.

So, all you folks saying it's fine that two separate (publicly funded) proms were held are totally okay with separate, white and black proms being held too, right?

I'm from the South, born and raised there, please believe me, this still happens, ever year, in towns big and small, all across the South.

It's not okay when it's racial segregation, and it's not okay when it's any other kind of segregation. It's not about forcing kids to show up - it's about not permitting federal and state funds to be funneled towards segregation, racial or otherwise, in violation of federal law. Yeah, any despicable nitwit with cash can throw a private party. A public school district, however, can't.

Adults can be real assholes sometimes.

@117, I hate feeding trolls, but: Word is the school helped plan etc. the "real" prom.

And I'd much rather be Venom's friend than yours, your trolling sucks. Not worth the time if you're even an idiot at what you're good at.

Also for any of you with any snooping skills at all (most of you): nothing is better for finding out what went down with a bunch of high schoolers than the mybook and the facepage.

@115:
"How much time have you spent in the South?"
Enough to know I'm always going to be a Cascadian.

"How did you become so knowledgeable about Southerners?"
I'm not that knowledgeable about all Southerners. But speaking for Venom, I'm pretty sure he's just talking about the ones who post on this board. Actually, I'm totally sure of that. It's exactly what he said.

"Let us guess, some of your best friends are Southerners, right?"
"Let us guess"? Who really says that? Is this a multiple personality issue. And no, none of my best friends are Southerners.

"Do you know as much about Southerners as you do about Serbs?"
I know more about Southerners than I do about Serbs.

"You know, I imagine the judge is going to take this in fairly good spirits...I mean, federal judges LOVE to be made fools of, don't they?"
No, they don't. But more than that, your implication here is that the school's act of perjury was some clever trick that we should all admire. Oh, snap! Your bigotry totally pwn'd our rule of law! Damn, that was slick. We'll even let you gloat about that for like, 5 years in federal prison. Sound good? Yeah, sounds good.

"Though they probably wouldn't listen to those "fairy Satanists" Judas Priest in good ol' Fundieland, would they?"
I don't even know what this one means. But I do know it's stupid.

"Are all Southerners as stupid as you?"
Well no, there are smarter Southerners. He's just pretty stupid.

@118: You're right. They're goin down for this - ya know, because injustice doesn't just "fly." Anyway, I will disagree to say this: Venom's hardly a troll. Well, okay, maybe s/he is. But s/he's a fucking awesome troll.

That being said, if we've learned anything here today, we can at least conclude that Cascadia is way more badass that either West Virginia OR Mississippi. Actually we can't conclude that at all. But I'm gonna go ahead and conclude that anyway.

@120: Aw, thanks, doesurmindglow. I don't really care how I'm classified as long as "fucking awesome" is in there somewhere.
But I think Alleged's comment about Serbs was in reference to my comment about a culturally insensitive Serbian dormmate of mine. Just for the record, Alleged, he's said that Serbia (at least the parts that his family's from) is composed mostly of backwoods Old Country-type people who don't very well understand other peoples. Actually, he considers himself fairly progressive and open-minded in comparison. I believe him on that.
Also, I think that #116 might not have actually been Alleged; I'm of the opinion that the post was intended to state that the judges will deal harshly with that kind of perjury.

@121:

Ahaha, no problem. I sort of get it now. That whole Serbs deal was kinda confusing me. Interesting side note: it's way easier to make fun of ignorant Southerners than ignorant Serbs. Somehow the social contract of the American nation-state makes their injustices - such as this one - more immediate, pressing, and safer to address, though, as you bring up, those which occur worldwide might be much more egregious. And, yeah, I was pretty sure #115, 116 and 117 were all different people. I didn't know for sure because of their equally snarky unregistered bylines.

Nonetheless, whoever this favorite troll of ours is, the whole "liberal intolerance" red herring should finally be put to bed by some ingenious rhetorician who obviously isn't me. I've been thinking about it for a while, feel free to move on if you feel this longer discussion is all kind of redundant at this point.

You know what the "liberal intolerance" red herring it kinda reminds me of? Those arguments that environmental land-use restrictions will "make housing unaffordable." Like wealthy developers looking to end environmental protection ever gave a shit about the "affordability of housing." But they do know that the environmentalists do.

It's an argument these conservatives make not because they give a fuck about intolerance and hatred - they clearly don't: Because it's just fine, as the argument goes, for someone to be intolerant or hateful against gays, while it's a total injustice to call someone out for being intolerant or hateful, even if that "calling them out" consists of little more than saying they're intolerant or hateful.

They make the argument instead because they know we care about it: they know that even though they only give a shit about themselves and their personal license to hurt whoever they please, they think we might be manipulated by the suggestion that we're doing harm undeservingly to another. The hope is that we'll back off and leave their corrupt intolerance alone because some part of us is indeed deeply concerned they might be rendered voiceless or oppressed by the best of intentions.

I also think it's come up more and more recently because their ideology is collapsing in the post-Bush era, and they know it. Gay marriage probably won't be debated by my children; and certainly not by my children's children. Being unable to any longer publicly justify their ideology of hate, injustice, and environmental degradation on their logical and/or emotional merits, they turn instead to demanding silence: hoping that if we just don't say anything, if we just don't talk about it, then their endangered and soon extinct ideas will hold out a little while longer in the cocoon of ignorance. The "liberal intolerance" herring, I've begun to think, is the manipulative, philosophical equivalent of "Na-na-na-na-na-na! I can't hear you!"

It doesn't ever defend intolerance. It's distraction, it just seeks to divert the progression of tolerance. It's like the "bargaining" stage of grief or something over their dead idea: "Let us just continue to be intolerant for a little while, come on, please, we know it's wrong, but like, aren't you just as wrong if you try to stop us now? Please? Just let us keep a lesbian from going to this one prom..." Soon it'll be: "Well this country's just fucked, it's all going to hell now. The gays are everywhere. There's nothing we can do, they brainwashed our children and propped up their secret Muslim leader. Might as well just go home and die. No one cares what we think anymore." And after that, we might finally get "You know, gay people aren't so bad..." and so on.

In short, they don't want to have to defend their ideas because, in the ideological ecosystem of the future, part of them knows won't be able to. So they're hoping we'll just let them be bigots in peace and not challenge their beliefs. At best, it's intellectually dishonest. At worst, it's cowardice.

The parents and students that ran the secret 'real' prom (some of whom are now stating 'it wasn't a prom' and then having their own posts about 'the parents prom' thrown back in their faces) probably didn't do anything illegal. If the school was involved with helping plan the 'secret' prom then they certainly did go against the judges orders.
But see, the thing is, just because something is legal doesn't make it right. What this class, this small town, did was horrifyingly cruel and small-minded. That so many of the kids who attended the prom (and at least one parent who helped organize and posted pictures) list christian organizations on their facebook fan lists just goes to show that most people don't read their own scriptures.
What's sad is that, of course, this has all been done before. As a poster on one of the blogs talking about this pointed out, it happened in another southern state many a decade ago.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=XSA…
The kids who pulled this prank last time have lived with the regret ever since and are now trying to make up for it. But apparently that lesson hasn't been fully learned everywhere.
While I detest threats, and am generally no friend of harassing, I do think it is important that a level of social pressure is kept on this city and those who helped organize and support this bull puckey. They need to know that what they did was not okay, and that they are not going to be seen as the good guys, and that society at large deems them to be petty, nasty little monsters.

@ 123 - thanks for the link to that terrific story, though it saddened me deeply.

I'm saddened, and angered, by the cruelty shown by some people, and the anonymous troll and LC are perfect examples of such cruelty. I can only hope there is a special place in hell for people like them.

@108

I think you need to check again. Of course, we're getting more detail as time goes on, but all the quotes I've seen from Constance were that she was aware that the other party was being planned, but that she was not invited. She went to the event she was invited to - the fake one.

That seems more likely to be true than the idea that the entire town could have kept the information from her, and that absolutely nobody would have told her, even quietly and privately. Although, it does beg the question of who officially invited the kids to the better-attended event, and who paid for the fake one and whether they were in on it.

If the kids who did attend "had the time of their life" then there presumably was food and music. Or maybe it was just a night where they knew all the jerks and bullies were safely corralled somewhere else.

i really want to see a media shitstorm happen. i agree with 123, they need pressure, they need attention, they need to know the rest of the world only sees them as narrowminded, ignorant bigots and that image is compounded by their actions and will be go away until they start acting like civilized adults.

i wish there was something i could. i really feel angry about all this.

Everyone who is saying "the school can't force kids to go to prom with a gay person" has a stupid, indefensible argument.

What these people did was despicable. They lied and they flouted the spirit of the judge orders when all they had to do was let Constance know where the alternative prom was. They didn't have to lie to her. She's a teenager for god's sake. These are adults. They should know better. And so should you.

I mean, what it boils down to is that someone (most likely a parent, possibly a school faculty member, maybe a combination) decided, "We need to teach that uppity lesbian a lesson." Does that language sound at all familiar to anyone?

As a Christian AND an Alabama native (and resident), I am appalled that this type of behavior seems to be widely perceived as indicative of how "southern Christians" act. And every time something like this happens, these dipshits make it that much worse for the rest of us.

What happened to Constance McMillen was Wrong, and I hope she is able to get away from those idiots in Small Town, Mississippi. As for the idiots -- well, we can hope for some sort of legal repercussions, but their small-mindedness and the fact that they miss out on so many of the good things and people in the world are a form of punishment, too, from an outsider's perspective. You can keep your bigotry, Itawamba County. The rest of us will gladly accept Constance and the other kids from her prom and be all the better for it.

oops! The correct links should be:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49072607@N0…

http://lafiga.firedoglake.com/2010/04/05…

http://lafiga.firedoglake.com/2010/04/05…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49072607@N0…

And the high school's photo page.... http://www.itawambaahs.com/Photos%20Page…

@107: No, I'm pointing out that you always scream "stupid gays, stupid liberals" when clearly the non-liberal and decidedly un-gay states also have a problem with HIV and AIDS. If so many people are HIV positive in a place like Mississippi, either you concede that HIV/AIDS is not as limited to gay men as you constantly propose, that there are more gay people than you care to reckon with and/or you have a great deal of difficulty with statistics.

@115: I know a helluva lot more about southerners than you do, I can guarantee that. If you'd like to discuss the general climate of the south, I'm game. Otherwise, your nonstop whining about liberals attacking the heartland is really just the same ol' passive-aggressive whining-disguised-as-trolling that seems to be the oeuvre of Alleged. It's so very left coast.

Even if you could prove that the school board was genuinely behind the two proms (and I'd say it's about a 70-80% chance that parents of the other kids set the whole thing up and deliberately left the school out of it for plausible deniability purposes), I think at this point time and energy would be better spent finding ways to help Constance get to college far from there and let the rest of the town sit proudly in its own feculence.

Get some talk show host to make up an award to give to the town congratulating them on their commitment to bigotry (perhaps with a statue depicting a golden plastic burning cross) as one last "fuck you" and let the matter drop. We've taken it as much as they can and the town has been able to take it further. At this point, best to let John Stewart wrap it up on the Daily Show and move on.

@139: Do 100% of MSM identify as gay/bi?

This one is my favorite hypocrite picture from prom night:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49072607@N0…

Why the hell are you lot talking about AIDS? It's not relevant to this debate. If there's one group of people who are the least likely to transmit sexual diseases it's lesbians.

Personally, I think the biggest threat is the Catholic Church telling people there are holes in condoms but that's another discussion.

Anyway, I think George Dawes said it best: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xinLivR8S…

@123: That was a really interesting article. The most interesting aspect is when you take the people doing the hate out of their time and context, what they did looks totally ridiculous. I'm almost certain what these people did to Constance will look the exact same way in say, 35 years. We'll be explaining it to our kids who'll just be like, totally unable to understand that this kinda thing once went on. And was normal. And to some people, they thought it was even justified.

In the mean time, I'm also pretty sure that, when that time comes, the students, parents and school officials will be burdened with regret - if nothing more, that their political intentions and petty selfishness as characterized at #137 allowed them to do something horrible to a 17 year-old girl that really did nothing wrong. Anyway, I hope at that point they'll also be able to do as one of the formerly-racist students in that story did and apologize to Constance.

Anyway, thanks for the fascinating article!

@137: This argument amounts to "We hurt Constance to punish you. So there!" Yeah, um, grow up. It's not that hard. You're going to look back on this and be like "God, how could I have been that stupid??" We've all been there. We all understand. So it's time to grow up and quit whining about "us liberals" and our "big city lawyers" and whatever the hell else you don't understand.

At best, your argument here is not that they're bigoted, just that they're petty and stupid enough to defy what's right just to annoy us. Hint: we don't care that much.

What they did to Constance will hurt them far more than it will ever hurt us, even if we never said a word about it for the rest of our lives. Doing something cruel and evil to another person stays with you forever. It's a pain that runs deep, a guilt that's hard to resolve. You try to justify it, to explain away what you did, you try to blame other people, as we see here. But in the end, all you feel is pain. All you can do is learn from it.

So, yeah, we hope they - and you - learn from this. It was a mistake, and hopefully you one day - like in the case at 123 - will grow up enough to be able to admit it. It's just sad you didn't when you were high school. Most of America's next generation simply did.

@139, 141, 143: Thanks Coveredinbees, this argument was clearly stupid. Even if gay men were "to blame" for 100% of AIDS cases, and gay sex caused 100% of new AIDS cases, it still would not be right to discriminate against them for being gay. All that says to me is that we need to improve the consciousness around using appropriate protection. So yeah, try again...

Ah nuts. No youtube links? Google 'George Dawes Lesbian song'

144: these people will never regret what they did unless there are financial consequences, and even then they'll simply blame Constance and those who support her. All those parents and kids are probably pretty proud of themselves: they stuck it to the court, they stood up for what they believed in. Nobody who would participate in something so petty and cruel is going to suddenly think, gosh, maybe it wasn't very nice to exclude the special needs kids and to let a small handful of the least popular students think they were invited to the prom when they were being deliberately left out.

@142: Haha Arboreality, that's hilarious. See, if Constance and her girlfriend both had brought male dates but then danced together all night and then gone home together, yeah, that would have been fine. But if she wants to just bring her girlfriend to prom, well, we know how that goes.

There's nothing wrong with being a lesbian if it turns guys on. There's just something wrong with it if it's actually love. Oh dear, ridiculous...

@150: Oh no, I don't think it'll happen suddenly. But think about this some 35 years down the road, ya know? Like won't it just look really bizarre? I feel like at that point it'll just be regrettable, long after the debate over whether gays have rights is largely "settled," as the debate over whether blacks have rights is largely settled now.

Sure, for the next few years, they'll just blame us and feel proud of themselves for sticking up for their values against the whole liberal onslaught and whatnot. They might even gloat about it in private: "Jeez, we really showed them! If they hadn't come down here and made such a fuss... well, we sent 'em packin'! Hot damn!"

But as our society moves on, and America changes, the guilt will start to creep in. The feelings of looking back with self-disdain will grow. Hell, a couple of the people who went to the "real prom" will come out of the closet... It's just going to get worse. I'm one to argue hate is almost as hurtful to the people who hate as it is to the people who are hated.

It's as the Buddha once said: "You will not be destroyed for your anger, you will be destroyed by your anger." I think that lesson could really resonate here if we wanted it to.

In other words, I was letting 137 know to worry not: we're playing the long game, and we know we'll probably win.

Troll @ 137 - Fail

No, my wanting Constance to enjoy her Prom with her fellow students, as she wanted, by taking the date of her choice IS NOT THE CRUELTY, you mindless fuck.

YOU, and YOUR ILK, that believe it was JUST TOO FUCKING MUCH OF CONSTANCE TO ASK, to go to her Prom, being the person she is, that is/was the cruelty.

SO FUCK YOU ALL TO HELL, and kindly shut the fuck up.

@154: Haha, yeah riiiight... You know, if it just weren't for these damned liberals, all Southerners would be tolerant, reasonable people who accept other human beings for who they are and work out solutions that put those human beings' interests first. But when liberals come in and tell them to do that, that's when they get all bigoted and hatey - you know, out of spite for the "liberal aggression."

That's the lesson here: if we had just left the school alone, they never would have discriminated against Constance. Yep. I'm sure. That's totally reality, right there.

Didn't people use to make this EXACT argument against desegregation? Against emancipation? "The War of Northern Aggression"? It's the exact same argument! It's almost comical. This "argument" played so well the first 174 times, why not try it again? You know, hey, 175's the charm.

None of the tangents and side-arguments posted here really matter.

When it comes to a city that would rather ban prom than let a girl bring a girl to it, who who rather openly plan a private prom that she would not be invited to, who in the face of a court ordering them to invite her to that private prom would rather cancel it, who would then go out of their way to pretend to plan an inclusive prom and then create yet another secret, non-inclusive prom...there is one simple heartbreaking truth.

It was just...MEAN. Unconscionably, willfully and needlessly mean.

Well, duh... It's High School.

As much as my heart aches for someone to deliver righteous comeuppance upon the mean, in truth, the best revenge is success.

Constance...you're now free to move on without ever looking back. Your future is in front of you. Leave all of these people for whom their lives will never improve after High School behind to man their Wal-Mart check out lanes.

They've had the time of their lives. Your life, elsewhere, is just about to begin.

Oh shit, I was in the middle of leaving a snarky comment on one of those Flickr photos (on brucekatz23's photostream) and the Flickr account got deleted sometime in between looking at the photo and pressing the "submit comment" button. The photos are all gone now, but of course they'll never truly disappear.

@154 - Why is it that the way you say "humane solution" sounds so ominous?

What kind of solution would have been humane that was anything different than what Constance was asking for in court?

Also, Contance didn't approach the ACLU until she was denied access to the original prom. Would the school administrators really try to negotiate for a "humane solution" if an 18 year old student continued to talk to them all by herself? Or would they have simply ignored her and stood by their "no" position.

Need to send this letter to as many relevant addresses as we can find.

"Dear (insert name here),

If you are a believing Christian, surely you must know Jesus knows what you did to Constance McMillen. As your Lord and Savior, Jesus knows your inmost heart, your smallest, most secret thought, and the motivation behind your every deed. He speaks to you in that small still voice, the one that you hear when you quiet your mind and pray for guidance from Him, the source of all Truth and Love.

And right now, Jesus is telling you that you are an asshole."

@159: "Annnnd... it's GONE!" --South Park

@160: Yeah, clearly. It's an argument that makes no sense at all. If it could have been worked out "humanely" without the ACLU, we never would have even heard about it to begin with. The argument is really childish. The implication is that the only reason this injustice happened is because the ACLU had the audacity - what nerve! - to fight for justice.

It's so dumb I can't believe we're even talking about it, much less that someone could actually like, in their head, actually believe that. I figure @154 is just using meaningless sophistry to try and "convince" us that this is "all our fault." I don't think he/she/it really gives a shit about Constance.

The "humane solution" is one that is tried and tested in the south. Put burning crosses in front of her house until she shuts up and/or leaves. Damn ACLU-ers sued them so much they don't have money to buy the crosses or the gas for the fire. What a darn shame. We should feel sorry for the spotlight we put on this town you guys.

@ 154 - you insufferable ignorant troll, I call bullshit.

If you recall, a judge found that Constance's rights had been violated. So, thankfully the ACLU was there to represent Constance, because if she would have needed to rely on the likes of you, she'd still be waiting, with violated rights.

Cram your boo-hoo bullshit about how this is the fault of the ACLU and those of us that showed Constance support. Her rights were violated, and the ACLU did what they do best, stood up for the rights of a citizen of this nation that needed to be represented. Or maybe you think you're just so fucking smart and the judge was an idiot too.

Hey, unregistered troll--

This story is pretty straight-forward. You try desperately in your posts to hijack the narrative, throw in some quotes, add an undercurrent of conspiracy and basically try to spin the story into something unrecognizable. "Oh!" you say, "If only you silly people would consider x y & z, you'd realize that the story is all wrong!"

Except for one thing-- the story is pretty simple, there's not much you can spin to change it. It's a story that everyone, including yourself, can understand. Everyone has witnessed a group excluding an individual. What we're seeing is a playground story, something that's happened over & over for millenia. You can spin a rock as many times as you like, insist that if you look at it this way it isn't really a rock, but you'll fail. It's a rock, everyone knows what that is.

So if you like it that an individual was targeted & excluded based on her sexuality, be honest about it & accept the judgment of your peers (e.g. you bigoted fuckwad.) But don't try to tell us we're not seeing what we're seeing.

To anyone still reading, the little shits in her school have added a facebook page to mock Constance on the matter. Search your facebook for "Constance quit yer cryin" (seriously, that's what they called it).

You could, I don't know, fan the page, give them your thoughts and then promptly de-fan....

Just a thought...

@ 166 stated, "Suing poor inbreds won't accomplish anything." To which I say, the hell it won't.

Giving them a good financial bitch slap just might wake them up to reality.

What the school and parents of the other kids did to Constance was just plain wrong. Worse, they didn't have the guts to stand up for their bigoted beliefs and just tell Constance "Well, we don't feel comfortable letting our young' uns go to the prom with you because you're a f*ggot." No, they had to be snarky and childish and pull the rug out from under Constance. And people on here (like poster #2) seemed to actually think that if the "big ol' nasty liberal ACLU" hadn't stepped in, that Constance would have been able to attend the prom and everything would be hunky-dory. No, what would have happened was the same exact f*cking thing only no one would have known about it and Itawamba County would have gotten to save its crooked face. Oh well, the joke's on them, Constance-years later, when you have a successful job and happen to see one of your homophobic classmates ringing you up at the local Wal-Mart, have an extra laugh for me, ok?

Constance still has a chance to be infinitely more interesting (fuck the "successful job" crap--that's for Normals), than any of her idiot classmates (except for the ones who supported her).

It's really important that we remember that it's not some big organization that gives us natural (or as they say, God-given) rights. It's just that the People With Guns and Money promised to protect us from themselves when they act like assholes and take Away The Rights Humans Already Are Entitled To.

And Mr. Precious Prophet From Palestine is NOT the person to look to when discussing tolerance. The guy who calls non-Israelites "Dogs" and says, in the oh so perfect Sermon on the Mount that the only reason to Love Your Enemies is so they feel really guilty when they are rotting and burning in hell. Sorry. He's Not Your Friend.

The world is not for the Meek. The world is for people like Constance who aren't too pretentious and complicated to understand that when Those Who Know Best fuck with you, they need to answer for it.

Brer Rabbit -

Let it go? Ok. And tell you what...
We will let it go when [you/your mom/your son/your wife/your brother/your daughter] gets [mugged/raped/burglarized] because, well, what's the point? The [mugger/rapist/burgler] is not going to feel sympathetic. What's the point of monetary penalties anyway? This is a personal judgment call on the part of the rapist. To call in the cops, lawyers and judges is to call on some outside, meddling authority. Your daughter should just keep it to herself. If you feel offended by the rapist's actions, that's your right. It's the rapist's belief that violating your daughter was justified. After all, she was walking around in a skirt throwing her sexuality in everybody's face, right? Let's not impinge upon the belief systems of others, ok. All the other folks in town think it was ok to rape your daughter too, which only proves you are out of touch on this whole rape issue. To make more than a momentary stink about it would just be impolite. So just shut up about it. Too bad the rapist was part of the local government. Thems the brakes.

I am horrified by what has happened in this situation. Secret prom or no, the fact of the matter is that these people are breeding hatred and ignorance. So what if she's gay. She's not forcing anyone else to be gay. So what if the students snicker. They'd do that about anything...outfits, hairstyles, who is dancing with who. Eventually, they'd get over it. They are teenagers who are learning how to behave and deal with the world from people who do not know how to behave and deal with the world. I am a teacher, and I am horrified by what these children are being taught. I try everyday to show my students that tolerance and acceptance are important and that everyone deserves respect. Tolerance and acceptance are cornerstones for a healthy existence in this ever-shrinking world. The teachers and administrators in that district should have set the tone and encouraged acceptance rather than allow bigotry and ignorance to run amuck. It saddens me. I hope Constance and her partner don't suffer from all this drama. I hope that the other students learn that this was wrong. I hope the parents realize they need to be better role models. I hope a lot of things.

Small town parents whose lives peaked on their own prom nights, and never aspired to accomplish anything beyond their high school glory days exist in a lot of places - not just Mississippi. It unfortunately gets toxic when you throw in the bigotry and pettiness and hypocracy. Why should parents get so involved in their kids' proms, anyhow? Maybe they have nothing else.

@ 172: In the US, tolerance is required. Acceptance is not -- it is a personal choice. That applies to social re-engineering inclined teachers and administrators as well.

If this has been addressed by someone and I missed it, apologies... Focusing not on Constance, but the OTHER students also at "Prom", it's reported at least two of the students are special needs students. If this is, indeed, true it seems to me that along with the wrong that's been done to Constance, the school/students/parents went for the vaunted Tifecta of Douchebaggery. Deny a student her rights, BLAME HER when told by the court that the school cannot deny her said rights, then as a bonus, a lagniappe, send not just the troublemaking gay girl to the fake prom, but the DISABLED kids,too!

It seems to me that this is highly organized cooperation to deny someone/somepeople of their legally protected rights. Maybe homophobia might keep the story from getting the attention it absolutely, unequivocally deserves but add to it this same organization's seeming approval of keeping disabled kids out of the "real" prom and I think the argument could be made that the school officials, parents and perhaps students criminally conspired to violate Constance's and the other students' Constitutionally protected civil rights.

The more information that comes out about this, the more and more it sounds exactly like criminal conspiricy to keep a very specific few people from exercising their civil rights. Any civil rights lawyers on here can set me right if I'm incorrect in my interpretation, but as a card carrying member of the ACLU, it seems like this is the type of situation they take on.

So if any of these "Prommers" for lack of a better (non-inflammatory) name claim later that they just wanted to get way from Constance and all her drama; or we didn't want to do what the ACLU tells us to do: I would ask, why then did the diabled, special need students ALSO wind up at the "Fake" Prom instead of the "Real" Prom? Even though I personally doubt that will be answered, I think I have a pretty good idea what the answer is.

Someone has uploaded pictures from the private prom with the attendee's nasty facebook statuses.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49081507@N0…

Now they'll be out there on the internet for all future potential employers and friends to see FOREVER. Karma is a bitch!

Darn, couldn't copypaste the whole link above:

www.flickr.com/photos/49081507@N02/

@172: In the US, tolerance is not really required either, clearly. I think what's been overlooked, though, in this whole debate is this idea that it would "hurt people" to either have to be tolerant or accepting. It doesn't. Learning acceptance is actually good for everyone, the hateful almost as much the hated.

That being said, no, we ultimately cannot force anyone to accept someone they won't. Nor was that ever our intent, I don't think. It at least wasn't my intent. The intent was to force them to examine and defend their bigoted actions, to either articulate how what they were doing was fair, or maybe realize that it wasn't, to expose the real-life truth of what bigotry looks like, and to then have the conversation.

I think the goal was to support Constance, and let her know loud and clear that, outside of her little town, there are hundreds of thousands who believe in her just as thousands believed in Rosa Parks and the Little Rock 9. In the longer term, it was a teachable moment.

Thousands of these moments later, more and more people will realize that this - what happened this weekend in Mississippi - was wrong morally, if not legally. And that's how we actually change these things, because as people learn about hate and feel the guilt that comes with it, they'll choose to be accepting. We're in the process of building a complex social ecosystem in which this hate is poorly adapted to survive, just as our forefathers built one in which racism has become endangered.

In other words, as they learn for themselves, they won't need to be forced by anyone. It's probable that most of the people in Fulton, MS learned jack shit about acceptance or tolerance from this incident. Others are unwilling to admit they learned something now, frustrated by the spotlight, but will later come to appreciate Constance's message and struggle as they look back on it. And yet thousands more around the country did learn something about human rights, just as thousands of other people also learned a little something about Fulton, Mississippi and some of those cruel people who live there.

@179: Haha, I knew someone was going to do that. I dunno if anyone's really thought about the whole Silicon Valley warfare aspect of this whole debacle, but it's really quite fascinating how the internet has been used as a tool to broadcast this story well beyond the boundaries of a tiny town. There's a degree to which it's fostered - for better or worse - an "openness," a "human network." Actually maybe there's something a little poetic in the fact that "90% of the internet's data travels across the networks of 'Cisco Systems"... weird... are you ready? Anyway, dippy far-fetched parallels disposed of, now moving on...

@180: So much orange spray-tan!

The court didn't force the school to reinstate the prom because it was told that the parent-organized prom would welcome all the students and that Constance was definitely invited. Judging from the number of kids who put "prom" in quotation marks on their Facebook pages, and the fact that when Constance asked about prom she was directed to the country club, and the fact that the special needs kids were sent there too, it seems pretty obvious that that was a lie and that there was a deliberate effort to exclude some of the students.

@182, and notice the back-combing on the hairdo. Damn, that is my Gulf Coast home for sure! (what's up with the shoes? They look like white flippers--is she going snorkeling later?)

whatsallthisthen has posted a bunch of screenshots of the Facebook page entitled "Constance quit yer cryin'".

Hope these future "you-want-fries-with-that" assholes with their full names listed see these pages come back and haunt them at college admission and job application time.

@183: Ha. As if you're not ALL about moral superiority. That's your bread-and-butter, bro - I'm sorry. On top of that - you're just not defending the bigotry - or their actions - with this argument. You're only attacking our reaction to the bigotry, which you claim is no different than the bigotry itself. If this is so, then your reaction to our reaction is also no different than our reaction: hateful, smug, dripping with moral superiority, yeah, it's all there. And they are making your exact argument in defense of their bigotry, evidenced by their facebook posts, which is why it's worth addressing at more length:

Even if you prevail in tagging us as self-righteous liberal haters, you still haven't addressed why what they did in Fulton wasn't stupid, immoral, petty and wrong. All you've done is established that we're bad people. Your argument is, at the most sympathetic reading, that everyone in this equation are at least equally bad people.

That isn't at all convincing because it rests on this notion that our intolerance is wrong and can't be tolerated. If that is so, which, sure, it could be, then why is their intolerance perfectly fine? For all your vitriol, you have never explained this. You've never even tried to. You're here to express your intolerance of our intolerance for being there to attack their intolerance. It makes no sense. It's a sad attempt to turn the conversation - which is about treating gay people like straight people - into this ridiculous circular ad hominem.

I mean, I could just as easily say to you now: "It's funny: you're about protecting the rights of the people of this town, but when we try to express ours by saying what they're doing is dumb, suddenly that's not okay. You think you're all 'tolerant' but once we disagree with your point of view in the slightest, we're suddenly a 'hate machine.' And you call that 'tolerance.'" See? The formula's no different. This sophistry could go on and on forever.

The main difference that does exist between our arguments is time - that your comments are going to look ridiculous in, like, 20 years. Or at least, as ridiculous as the "war of northern aggression" argument now looks in favor of slavery, or the "they don't understand how things work down here" argument now looks in favor of segregation. People had these EXACT arguments before: the "Kennedy boys" that came down to desegregate were considered - by people just like you - to be every bit as smug, elitist, stuck-up and self-righteous as you claim we are now. They were accused of "inciting the negroes with whom a perfectly reasonable solution would have been worked out by us local folk till these northerners came down here and stirred the pot." NONE of this is new.

So while I'm sure this does sound as self-righteous as fuck to you right now, let's just wait on it a few years. Times are changing. If we end up being wrong, feel free to come back and rub our noses in it. But we won't end up being wrong.

Also, what the fuck is with your horrible misuse of the return key? Knock it off. It's dumb.

@187: I was sort of waiting for that to happen. I actually don't think they should be barred from going to college by this, but I do think their college friends should be able to find out about it.

Social pressure is sometimes what makes people realize they're wrong: when they're attempting to explain their actions to new people who don't understand them, they'll go: "wait, that actually doesn't makes sense." You have to re-examine yourself. So yeah, send 'em to college, where their beliefs can be challenged and they can challenge the beliefs of others. I'm confident the gay rights side will prevail in that debate.

@188:
Alleged must be
some sort of failed poet.
He likes to Write things in short broken-up lines
like this.

But his word choice is Pedestrian and dull
his tone is impossible To take seriously
every other line contains the phrase
"HomoLiberal Hate Media"

and he Uses capitalization Oddly.
In short

I've read better poetry
from my semi-literate Classmates
back in 6th grade.

@190:

If not a failed poet, at least a failed interlocutor with his
smug and self-referential postings.

Haha, but I indeed also Noticed
his strange use
of Capitalization.

I wonder

what about the
"HomoLiberal Hate Media" has caused him to
take Such offense to the normal Construction of English prose?

Also I wonder, if we keep baiting Alleged, can we get this board
to over 200 comments? :)

Q: Why did Jay-Z do a drive-by of Disney World?
A: Because his kid said he wanted to see Disney on Ice. Buh-dump-dump-bang!

@191: Don't underestimate the schmuck. I think that if he thought he could get people to pay attention to him, he'd keep commenting until it was >9000.

@192:
Q: Why does Snoop Dogg carry an umbrella?
A: Fo' drizzle.

@193: Haha, fair points, all. I actually wouldn't even spend the time responding to him except that his argument is actually somewhat pervasive - it is often the chief argument trotted out by those supporting the continuing bigotry in this case.

Rarely do they spend any time on actual arguments, for example: "By allowing Constance to take her girlfriend to prom, school officials would be teaching our children an immoral lesson: that it's okay to participate in sin and behaviors that destroy the traditional family." They don't make these arguments because they're scared. They're cowards. Terrified that if they, like Constance, stood up for what they actually believed in - I guess, the belief that being gay is injustice and sin and destructive to families - they know they wouldn't have a leg to stand on in today's America.

So in recent years, they've been reduced to constantly, and predictably, pulling out this "hypocrisy" red herring. To me, this is actually a good sign: Alleged and the Mississippi officials are falling back to a weaker position because their front line argument has been broken. They've given up on turning back the clock of human rights, but they can still try to annoy and discredit those who moved it forward. Because it's now cited so often as justification for the cruelty they're perpetuating, I think it's worth examining.

Also, you raise a significant point when you point out that Snoop carries his umbrella fo' drizzle. I think this conclusion really speaks some of the critical questions at issue here. ;)

@87, 94, 95: You too won't be eligible for prom until you learn that Mississippi is on a coast. Only @185 knew about that, referencing "my Gulf Coast" in the middle of a geographically accurate but otherwise homophobic comment.

Go Constance! Even in the South, coastal or otherwise, it only gets better after high school. I should know, I'm from Kentucky.

You know, I remember my own prom (in the school gym) being really toxic and parent-directed and popularity oriented. And we all got to go, even the girl in the tux and her girlfriend. But it still sucked. I got to be there, but the best thing that ever happened was what happened after, when I got to get the fuck out of that town.

Did anyone mention the fact that two of the seven kids who got invitations the faux-prom were learning-disabled kids? It seems that whoever engineered this thing wanted to segregate all of the social outcasts and second-class untermensch in one place. The reason why only seven people were invited was probably because there weren't any Gypsies living in that podunk Mississippi burg, and the Jews had all been driven out or lynched during the 1960's and the time of the Freedom Riders.

This just in-- the learning-disabled kids who were invited to Constance's faux-prom were known to have difficulty concentrating, and the School District lacked the funds necessary to send them to a proper concentration camp.

@196-199 Mississippi is actually quite progressive for a Red State. A married couple in Mississippi who obtain a divorce actually do remain cousins, or brother and sister.

"Intelligence has its limits -- but stupidity knows no bounds."

@196-200: Your caps lock is on. Turn it off.

The courts will decide whose case has merit on this one. But hint: It won't be the bigots. You can't force people to attend a prom if they don't want to, but you can't commit perjury to dodge an injunction either.

@202: Yeah, that actually makes this a much bigger legal issue. While gays and lesbians still have relatively few - though expanding - legal protections, those with disabilities have extensive legal backing under current discrimination laws.

So while I'm sure they thought it was just hilarious to make Constance's prom into "the retard prom!!1!," they really did themselves in with that part of this cruelty. Good point though.

@198: Caps lock does not make you smart, gillettebret.
The lying under oath that JoeMyGod was talking about would apply if the school officials who agreed to allow Constance to go to prom had a hand in planning the secret prom. They agreed to let her attend; if they knew that the official prom was just a decoy, then they can be charged with perjury. Pull your head out of your ass.