Mississippi Queen, by Arthur Tebbel & Chris Toia – Pop Art… and Chris #67
Dear Art & Chris,
I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the case of Constance McMillan. She’s a high school senior in Mississippi. She wanted to bring her date to the senior prom so they cancelled the prom. I should mention at this point that she’s a lesbian. And she wanted to wear a tuxedo. The school decided that the furor over her request was such that it would be easier to cancel the entire event. You guys are experts in sensitivity, what do you think the proper response would have been?
-Christine Sun, American Civil Liberties Union
Christine,
The proper response would have been to let her go to the stupid prom. After all proms are pretty gay to start with. We imagine if you pursue your lawsuit far enough you’ll win. The Supreme Court will argue about it and then take your side. Then every gay couple in America will have to go to prom in Mississippi. They’ll probably put all of them on buses to shore up their numbers. Maybe the National Guard will have to help too. Sounds like a great time.
Of course, when all those gay people show up Mississippi will probably pretend they’ve never heard of prom. It would certainly fit with their history. When they ended segregation the city of Jackson had four swimming pools. Rather than desegregate they paved over three of the pools and donated the last one to the local YMCA which, as a private enterprise, could discriminate. I don’t see how this would be any different. Have you thought about having gay people boycott their bus system? That has a historical track record.
Since we decided to answer your letter there’s been a very positive development. Hotel owner Sean Cummings has offered to bus the students to New Orleans and host prom at one of his hotels. While it doesn’t settle the legal issue it does do two other things. One, a prom in New Orleans is probably about a million times better than a prom in Mississippi. For instance, you’ve never seen a set of videos about anyone going wild in Mississippi. If they did do videos it would probably be Girls Gone Chaste. Second, it reinforces a positive message for young gays. Move to a big city as soon as you possibly can. People in big cities don’t care who you’re having sex with and the high population means you’ll be far from alone, no matter what it feels like in high school.
When we started writing this we thought the overwhelming majority of people would have the same opinion we did on this topic. However, after perusing the discussion on the article on CBSNews.com it would appear we are in the minority. People came out of the woodwork to call this girl selfish for getting the prom cancelled for everyone else. As if it is more her fault than that of the people who actually cancelled the prom. People in this country have gone completely crazy on this topic. Being gay isn’t the problem; hating gays is.
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March 15th, 2010 at 10:37 pm
“People came out of the woodwork to call this girl selfish for getting the prom cancelled for everyone else.”
All she did was ask if she could bring her girlfriend. She didn’t “get the prom cancelled”. Idiots. (Not you two, Art & Chris.)
Sinbad was on The Bonnie Hunt Show Monday. He mentioned how he was reported dead on Wicked-Pedia when a fan was mad because he didn’t like Sinbad’s latest routine. Hunt made a comment about the internet being a home for cowards. Too true.
March 16th, 2010 at 5:50 am
Of course the girl is being selfish. Prom is the preview wedding for kids who didn’t get bat mitzvah’ed. The dress, the co-ordinating tux, the limo, the drunkeness, the promise of unsatisfying sex – it’s a preview for your wedding night. And if queer people get to go to prom, then they’ll expect to get married. Which is a threat. Especially to people who are what they hate.
March 16th, 2010 at 6:16 am
Hooray for Constance for standing her ground and enlisting help from the ACLU. Shame on any of her fellow students who direct their anger over the prom’s cancellation against her instead of the adult bigots who cancelled the prom.
Also, Kudos to Art & Chris for gleaning an enjoyable column from an enraging situation.
March 16th, 2010 at 6:35 am
And wait till this and every other graduating senior gets a load of how they feel six months past grad nite, how they were treated one step better than reform schoolers for four years of their one and only life and how they stood there and took it and their parents, who should have known better, somehow forgot all about it and perpetrated it again on their own flesh and blood.
We are a long way from understanding our souls, our young and the institutions we’ve made to educate them. Wackford Squeers lives in all of us. It’s the man in the mirror.
March 16th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
“She didn’t ‘get the prom cancelled’.”
The people who think she got the prom cancelled also think she made the request expressly for the purpose of raising this stink and it was her plan all along, and no application of facts will change that opinion.
I really expect this girl to have something terrible happen to her if this doesn’t get sorted. I haven’t heard about ANY of her classmates supporting her on this. All it’s gonna take is one weekend booze session and they’ll be lobbing rocks at her house.