Constance McMillen

Last week’s cancellation of the high school prom by Itawamba County (MS) Board of Education was “shortsighted”, said the editorial board for the regional newspaper that serves the area in northwestern Mississippi.

The cancellation was illegal and should be overturned quickly by a federal court, American Civil Liberties Union argued in a motion filed Tuesday with the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi in Aberdeen.

ACLU asks the court to issue a preliminary injunction stopping the school district from canceling the April 2 prom and from prohibiting Constance McMillen from bringing her girlfriend as a date and wearing a tuxedo to the event. McMillen is an 18-year-old senior at Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton, Mississippi.

“The prom is important to all of the students at my school, and I never thought the school would try to cancel the prom and hurt everyone just to keep me and my girlfriend from going together,” McMillen is quoted to say in a statement released by ACLU.

In its editorial Jackson Clarion Ledger writes:

The rest of the student body is apparently losing the opportunity to participate in a school prom.

This standoff is a battle that the school board will ultimately not win. Because the school district expends federal funds, the likely outcome of this legal battle will be that the school district somewhere up the federal court food chain will be found to have discriminated against McMillen. …

One would assume that straight couples would not be acting out on their sexual preference while attending a school event at Itawamba Agricultural High School. Why, then, would it be assumed that a lesbian couple would behave otherwise?

There obviously are gay students attending classes and the sky hasn’t fallen. Why, then, is a prom somehow a line in the sand?

Alt-prom offers pour in, but ACLU calls for official MS dance [contd.]

Constance McMillan’s case has generated significant national attention in this, the spring prom season for virtually all US high schools.

Associated Press has run several stories on its wire which have been picked up by newspapers and broadcast outlets throughout the country.

Newspapers elsewhere have asked about policies on same-sex dates for local students.

A Facebook page set up by ACLU called “Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to Prom!” has attracted over 325,000 fans.

Jennifer Carr, Development Director for the ACLU-Miss, told WAPT that the support from groups across the country has been overwhelming, but said changing school policy is vital.

“It’s important that we remedy this current situation, but also to continue our efforts to make sure this doesn’t happen again in the coming years,” said Carr.

Offers have been made by several groups to hold formal dances for students in the Fulton area. One of those offers comes from Safe Schools Coalition of Mississippi and the Empowering Spirits Foundation (ESF), a national LGBT civil rights organization. Those group have offered to promote an all-inclusive prom in the Fulton area, but Christine Sun, a senior counsel with the ACLU's national gay rights project, told Associated Press that the organization is determined to put the prom back on the school calendar.

A. Latham Staples, ESFs president and CEO, told WAPT TV, “The School Board didn’t take into account the rights of this student, but instead made a rash decision based on dogmatic principles; which in turn has left Constance in a situation where she is uncomfortable to just attend school.”

McMillen is quoted in ACLU’s release as saying, “A lot of people have made really generous offers to pay for a prom somewhere else, which I really appreciate – but all I’ve ever wanted was to be able to just go to my own school’s prom with my girlfriend.”

An official with the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition, which has joined as a party in the ACLU lawsuit, told the Clariion Ledger that the organization has more than enough money pledged by supporters of McMillen to hold a “second-chance” prom that would welcome all students.

Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition spokesman Matthew Sheffield told the Clarion Ledger that so many people have offered money that the organization hopes to steer additional contributions toward the coalition’s regular work assisting gay and lesbian students.

But a few of Fulton-area residents indicated over the weekend that they don’t want to see a change in policy, by hanging signs at the high school. One of the hand-lettered signs reads “What happened to the Bible Belt?” Another said, “Why would we condone this?”

The sign-hangers told WAPT that they want the prom to go on without McMillen.

One of them, Eric Reyna, is quoted by the station: “When we send our kids to school, we want them to attend a function such as this that’s moral and stuff. There’s immorality there. What about our rights? About being able to go into a place and still maintain, you know, morality.”