Those of you who think that the issue of gay equality is about fair-mindedness, tolerance and respect for differing views, think again: a Mississippi high school has cancelled its annual student prom shortly after they declined the requests of one of its students – a lesbian – to bring along her girlfriend as her prom date and to wear a tuxedo instead of a dress. The teen, Constance McMillen, has since been encouraged to sue the school. She was also awarded a scholarship check of $30,000 from talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres for her bravery in challenging the School District’s ruling.

But does she have a right to attend her school’s prom on her own terms? And should the school be forced by law to hold the prom in order to cater for McMillen’s requests? Should the school be coerced into making provision for the exception?

Some could argue that if the school refused to provide, for instance, wheel chair access to its premises for disabled students, then that would be discriminatory. Such an analogy certainly couldn’t be used as a parallel to McMillen’s circumstance, however: a disabled student can’t necessarily climb a flight of stairs if they’re wheel chair bound, but there was nothing preventing McMillen from attending the prom and abiding by the rules set by the school to all of the student base. It was only McMillen’s desire that was declined; her desire is not something that is immutable in the same sense as a life-long disability. And desire is certainly nothing that can be compared to skin color with regards to race. (And given that McMillen’s girlfriend is also a member of the student body at the same school, there was nothing to prevent either of them from attending at all under the same rules as everyone else i.e. they both could have worn dresses.)

Back in March of last year, I commented on a similar story in which an Indiana school was forced by law to permit a lesbian student to wear a tuxedo to her school prom. This ruling was made despite the dress code required by all students attending the prom: boys to be decked out in tuxes and girls to be dolled up in dresses. There was no discrimination based on sex and it was apparent that full equality was offered for all students; yet the law in that instance insisted that the student be provided extra special treatment that, despite being female, she was not required to wear a dress as were the other girls. (Sure, you could then say that because of the ruling, the other girls could then wear what they wanted. But they may not have wanted to wear either a prom dress or a tux. What then? See the fun: pretty soon the glamor of the prom itself could be degraded by girls dressing in leggings and flannel blouses, followed by boys arriving in torn denim jeans and tank-tops. Hence, you would cease to have a prom at all if you followed the court’s ruling to cater for everyone else’s desires.)

It is that story – or others like it – to which I think the Itawamba County school board was prompted to cancel the school prom altogether. Better to ditch the prom rather than be manhandled to violate your own standards by political-correctness-gone-mad and acquiesce. I don’t necessarily agree with them cancelling the prom (because that just means all students are impacted instead of just one – I think they should have stuck to their guns and approached the issue with an even-handedness and fairness … and then brave and fight the legal salvos shot in their direction – but of course, I don’t know the extent of their purse-strings) but I do agree that they were put into a difficult position – owing to the overbalanced might of the gay lobby in America. In the end, at least by jury of the media, the school district was in a lose-lose situation no matter which they decided to go.

As Beetle Blogger so succinctly put it:

Is equal treatment enough? Apparently not. Forcing the school to not only have [the] prom, but to break their standards in order to do so goes against the freedom of the school and community to decide what standards their children will be subject to in their own community.

I echo this point: where matters of gay “issues” are concerned, equality is not good enough once the gay lobby get their mitts onto something. As is demonstrated by this story and others like it, organizations like ACLU and GLSEN will stop at nothing short of outright special rights, at the expense of the rights of the wider community. Such a movement will create – in the long term, if not sooner – an artificially elevated social group that will evolve into an untouchable class, almost reminiscent of white-supremacy that was enforced by slavery and then later by anti-miscegenation laws in the US during the last century. But the direction of a perpetual “equality for gays” movement without commonsense and fair-play can easily generate such another social divide – this time not unjustly spurred by the immutability of one’s skin color or ethnic origin, but by one’s chosen sexual behavior and desire for the rest of society to accept and approve of it, wholesale, without any hint of reproof, no matter how non-hateful.

So much for social tolerance and the respect of differing values.

Hat tip: Beetle Blogger

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