Louisiana Prom Controversy: David Loftus

I’m of two minds about this matter. On the one hand, it’s obvious the school district bowed to anti-gay bigotry in choosing to cancel the prom (and hinting that parents might choose to host a private event that could exclude gays and lesbians without raising any legal issues) in Fulton, a small town of 3,900 in the northeast corner of Mississippi. (That’s just over the border from Alabama and not too far south of Tennessee, for the benefit of us coastal types.)

On the other hand, I think McMillen and the ACLU should have thought twice about stirring up this hornet’s nest at this particular location and time. It’s not just that McMillen should have foreseen that any negative turn of events would be blamed on her and not the school board’s cowardice or the surrounding county’s bigotry; it’s that she and her girlfriend are probably poised to move out of the county (and possibly even the state of Mississippi) within the year, and they and the ACLU will leave a bitter taste in the mouths of the long-term residents, who will come down harder on the next same-sex couple that surfaces in Fulton.

Obviously it’s wrong for school officials to threaten to throw the girls out if their presence makes other students “uncomfortable” at the April 2 dance. The problem is, this is probably how things work all the time in Fulton among people who are no longer in high school, when they are not on public property and run a similar risk of making their neighbors uncomfortable. Until an actual crime is committed, the ACLU won’t be there to back people up.

You have to choose your battles. Sometimes it’s not worth the effort to try to change an entire region’s attitudes -- especially if you aren’t prepared to stick around and do the hard work of effecting change over time with your continuing presence and example. Assuming Constance and her girlfriend don’t plan to make a life for themselves in Itawamba County over the next few years, then their symbolic protest, backed up by the ACLU’s big stick, is more likely to be counterproductive. Of course everything looks more important to the average teen than to you or me, whether that teen is a crusading lesbian or a fearful, anti-gay bigot. I simply didn’t go to most of my high school proms when I was a teen because I had better things to do (and so did my girlfriend, I might add). Certainly a lot of people need to be reminded that there are gays and lesbians living among them, and they should be treated with kindness and respect; but maybe a lot of people need to learn that proms are not all that important in the big scheme of things, and some battles are more trouble to fight than they’re worth.