Adam Sunny Flanders

All she wanted to do was take her girlfriend to prom, but instead her Mississippi school cancelled prom just to stop her. I’m sure some of you are already familiar with Constance McMillen as her story circulates the major news networks. By doing this the Itawamba County Agricultural High School has violated the law and Constance’s rights. Christine Sun of the American Civil Liberties Union is now representing Constance in a lawsuit against the school. I’m sure they will win – the school’s behavior is something we’d expect from a 3rd world country with no civil rights.

On Facebook you can become a fan of Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to Prom!, which at the time of this writing has over 300,000 supporters! The ACLU offers information about gay and lesbian rights at prom. The ACLU points out “Fricke v. Lynch, a federal court [ruling] that [stated] any policy excluding same-sex couples from proms or school dances violates the right to free expression guaranteed by the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Other decisions have found that enforcing outdated notions that only boys can wear tuxedoes and only girls can wear dresses to Prom is illegal.”

This reminds me of my high school situation in 2005 when I was suspended for a week from Belfast Area High School for wearing a t-shirt that said, “It’s OK to Be Gay.” You can read the article by clicking HERE or visiting my Activism Page. In my case the ACLU also intervened and threatened BAHS with a lawsuit if they didn’t allow me to wear my pride t-shirts and have equal access to school resources for my Gay-Straight Alliance, as required by Federal law. Unfortunately the homophobia and anti-gay harassment continued from both students and teachers, and I transferred to Searsport District High School, graduating that same year. In fact, the superintendents both signed a superintendent’s transfer admitting the grounds for transfer (without tuition costs) was because of student and staff homophobia and harassment. I definitely empathize with you, Constance. Keep up the fight!

Definite cute thing of the day. Speaking of dinosaurs, my new website based on paleogenetics is coming very soon, probably sometime this week. I’ll post a link as soon as it’s ready to be published!

Daniel Radcliffe has become the new face of The Trevor Project. He just filmed a public service announcement for the organization, which focuses on suicide prevention efforts among gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered teens. In the video below he discusses the fact that he has known many gay men and that he thinks it is very important for a big star like himself to support gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth. He says this there is no other issue that he is more passionate about. I think this is great, following right on the heels of Dumbledore’s outing as gay. The second video below gets the main stars’ reactions to Rowling’s outing of Dumbledore. It’s cute and funny. Just more reason to love the series that got me into reading to begin with!

Today the District of Columbia began issuing licenses for same-sex couples. The DC Council recently ruled overwhelmingly in favor of same-sex marriage and some of them spoke to the fact that it would be wrong and unfair to allow voters to determine minority rights. Congress even had the opportunity to intervene and they did not, which seems to suggest an overall support for marriage equality in our Federal government.

The arguments in the Federal Prop.8 Trial rested last month and we await a decision. Judge Walker, who is presiding over the Prop.8 Trial, has apparently come out as a gay man. The fundamentalists are of course claiming bias, which is ridiculous, but I hope he does have a bias because this whole majority-voting-on-minority-rights thing has gone on long enough. We need the high courts and/or Congress to start making these rulings in favor of same-sex marriage so it can be legalized nationwide and the argument can be put to rest, just as the issue of interracial marriage was put to rest in 1967 following the Loving case, despite over 70% of Americans being opposed to it.