Way down in southwestern Mississippii, Ceara Sturgis makes no bones about being a lesbian. Everyone at her Wesson Attendance Center knows the 17-year old honor student, trumpet player and goalie on the girls' soccer team is gay.
Sturgis had her senior photograph taken last summer. When she submitted it for publication, school officials balked. No way is a girl going to wear anything other than a "drape." It's the same kind of garment women have been wearing in senior pictures since about 1901. Well, except for those institutions of learning which have chosen to move forward with the times. Broaden the mind and not the butt kind of thing.
Sturgis doesn't even own a dress -- certainly not a drape. So, it was only natural that she decided to wear a tux. She just wanted to express herself. "All I want is to be able to be me, and to be included in the yearbook."
The ACLU has given the school until Oct. 23 to respond before taking court action. Director Kristy L. Bennett said the teenager's constitutional rights are being violated and cited similar cases in other states which have been successfully challenged in court.
Isn't that pathetic! We must be able to be who we are without ridicule, abuse, hatred. We are the United States of America for goodness sakes. We are not robots, all looking the same and believing the same, acting the same, living the same way....
ReplyDeleteAnd on the conservative blog I read to see what the other side is saying on the internet, I see constant over-sensitive defenses of the moral superiority of the South to the North. Racism and sexism just don't exist down here, to here the southern right-wingers carry on. The blogger even expressed ignorance and affected disbelief at the Bob Corker/Harold Ford Jr Senate election in TN.
ReplyDeleteSo we have the girl being told she can't wear a tux in Mississippi... which to me is far less a 'gay' issue and far more a 'women's rights' issue even if the girl happens to be gay. What we're dealing with is, as Leslie noted, the cultural belief that a girl MUST wear a dress. Period.
I know straight girls who don't own dresses, let alone drapes.
And in Louisiana we have a justice of the peace who has been quietly refusing to grant marriage licenses to interracial couples for years. Google 'Keith Bardwell + interracial marriage' if you haven't already read it somewhere.
ReplyDeleteThe worst part isn't that he has been refusing to marry couples for years, but that he's only been called out on it now. That say a lot more about Louisiana race consciousness than a lone justice of the peace being a racist jackass.
Bardwell, of course, denies being racist. Like any Republican with a knowledge of history he knows exactly what constitutes a racist!
He lets his black friends use his bathroom, so he's obvious a good guy!