Mississippi School Cancels Prom Over Fears of Girls in Tuxedos

I didn’t realize that dress codes were so strictly enforced at school proms.

The Itawambans are going to be sorry when they face the backlash of a gay tourism boycott…of Itawamba, Mississippi.

@IanJ: Exactly. “You, in the halter and slit skirt, you’re okay. You, in the long sleeves and pants, nice try.”

The article seems remarkably vague – what exactly were the “distractions to the educational process caused by recent events”, apart from the school administrators being homophobes? If they hadn’t raised a stink about it, would anyone have even noticed?

I hope the (presumably very conservative) residents of Itawamba point out to the admins exactly how much money they’ve wasted hating on teh gheyz. Or are fiscal conservatives OK with that?

Catholicks in DC stop giving benefits to anyone to avoid giving to the ghez and now this.

is that going to be the wingnuts response to gay rights? no rights for anyone?

ok. I can live with that.

@Capt Howdy: Yep. Just like certain school districts canceling all afterschool programs as a response to kids forming Gay/Straight Alliances. Scorched earth for the fundie set.

@mellbell:
seems a rather dead end and desperate strategy to me.

I’d hit it.

@Prommie:

The penguin?

btw
I agree with you about being proud of the woman. and I think the south is rising in this respect. did we see that Atlanta was just named americas gayest city?

@Capt Howdy:

I’ve partied in Atlanta. What is that bar, the famous one? That was a good time.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax:
I dont know. there are several. and I am not good with names. I lived and worked in atlanta for two years in 06 and 07. it was a good time.

I would totally go back there to live.

@Capt Howdy: Yes. “You’re all equal now, and you’ll all get nothing and like it! Happy?”

Also, an “educational process” in Mississippi? Please.

ADD: May I just say that combining depressing news items with cute critter pics is really helping me cope.

@Mistress Cynica:
doesnt seem to me a very effective way to get people on your side.

but maybe thats just me.

Here’s the school district’s contact info in case you’d like to comment:

Teresa McNeece — superintendent
tmcneece@itawamba.k12.ms.us
phone (662)862-2159 Ext. 14

School Board:

Eddie Hood
a082315@allstate.com

Jackie Nichols
jnichols@itawamba.k12.ms.us

Harold Martin
hmartin@itawamba.k12.ms.us

Clara Brown
cbrown@network-one.com

Tony Wallace
twallace@nexband.com

Principal: Trae Wiygul

twiygul@itawamba.k12.ms.us

11900 Hwy 25 S
Fulton, MS 38843

(662)862-3104

Mississippi did just get around to banning slavery and wearing shoes, so cute young gay gals are still about 150 years ahead of their time.

@al2o3cr: Lesbians making out on the dance floor. It’d stop the show for all the right reasons.

@Capt Howdy:

The real question is: what excuse are the Catholics (and the school in this case) using? The Catholics have been giving benefits to remarried divorcees, right? So they’re already covering people who don’t fall under “their” definition of marriage…

Similarly, with the school, what’s the objection? It surely can’t be that gays are “immoral” or “going to hell” – after all, most of the hetero students are headed the same way with all the premarital sex. I don’t recall seeing anything about a virginity check before admission… ;)

@mellbell: Scorched earth is right. Hey Mississippi, I can smell the desperation from here! As Macauley Conner (The Philidelphia Story) said, “This is the Voice of Doom calling. Your days are numbered to the seventh son of the seventh son!”

Cancelling the Prom and blaming the chick, thats like the old drill instructor trick to promote group cohesion, like, make the whole platoon spend all night doing pushups in the mud, and tell them all they can thank the fat one over their eating the donut, its his fault they are all doing pushups all night.

@al2o3cr:
I think you are expecting way to much. they dont need no stinking excuse to stick it to fags.
Im willing to bet most of the parents in that district are perfectly ok with that decision.
speaking as a southerner.

the DC thing is a bit different. I doubt that one is over.

@Prommie:
and you remember what happened to him, right?

@FlyingChainSaw:
in 1970 I went to a Prom with my boyfriend in Blytheville Arkansas.
well, ok, I actually went with my boyfriends lesbian girlfriend and he went with her squeeze.
so it was not so blatant but by the end of the evening there was no doubt in anyones mind who was with who. the surprising thing to me was the lack of hostility. we danced together. no one said a word or tried to stop us.

I doubt very very much if that would be the outcome today.

@Capt Howdy: Things have been getting medievaler since the 1980s, that’s for sure. So, did the girls slow dance and make out and stuff? Did you take pictures?

@FlyingChainSaw:
they did and we did. although I honestly have no earthly idea where they might be at this point.

we actually took pictures under the floral horshoe. boy/boy and girl/girl

I know I still have those someplace. although I am not at all sure I would want to share them.
it was a really really ridiculous tux.

@FlyingChainSaw:
and yes indeed. many things that went on in the 70s would be completely out of the question now.
for example, the other day I watched a move we talked about here before, Satyricon. and it struck me that that film could never be made today.

@Capt Howdy: Oh, fuck, yes. The 1950s, with a booming bohemia, compares as a time of relative social freedom.

@Capt Howdy:

Or “Caligula”. I can’t see a studio exec greenlighting a fisting scene.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax:
or Saturday Night Fever. wait . . .

@Tommmcatt Say Relax:
but seriously. some of my favorite films are of that period. The Night Porter would never would get made.
Death In Venice probably wouldnt even make it.

@Capt Howdy:

Can you imagine what they would do nowadays to A Clockwork Orange?

@Tommmcatt Say Relax:
actually I sort of can. because I was at digital domain in 1995 when we first got the script for AI, another Kubrick movie.
I read that and was so fucking excited about it. then it got delayed and delayed and delayed and he died and Speigleburger took over.

the original script was way more creepy and profound. it was mostly about pedophilia. think about it, his best friend was a male prostitute.

and that script ended with him sitting on the bottom of the sea staring at the “Blue Fairy”

@Capt Howdy:

AI was weird – it was very obvious when the directors switched at various points. Everything would be all happy and Spielbergian and then BLAMMO something fucking *horrible* would happen. It was like watching the Ewok scenes from Episode VI intercut with A Clockwork Orange.

And I seem to recall thinking “WTF” when the *aliens* showed up towards the end.

@al2o3cr:
it was a hodgepodge.
some Kubrick elements. some crap.
and yeah, the alien thing at the end was allllll Speiglberger.

Dan Savage is on the fucking warpath, god bless him.

@al2o3cr: Yes, I remember that conclusion. Talk about pulling an ending out of your ass.

@SanFranLefty:

I love what he is doing but that poor kid. she obviously has a spine but I bet she never bargained for this.

@Capt Howdy: From what little I can tell at a distance, it doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal to her or her classmates — it’s the grownups who are acting like fucking imbeciles. Generational bigotry is dying off, ever so slowly.

@Capt Howdy:

That should have been the last scene in that film. The rest of it is so grafted on…it would have been brilliant the original way.

@nojo:
I hope you are right.
the last thing we need is another Matthew Sheppard.

@Capt Howdy: I doubt she, her father, or the ACLU attorneys were that surprised by the response. Remember the ’60s and ’70s when Southern cities would bulldoze swimming pools rather than integrate them? And Morgan Freeman paid for a prom in northern Mississippi a few years ago after the school canceled it rather than desegregate it. I think the gheyz of the world should get together and pay for and arrange the most fabulous event ever seen in Fulton, Mississippi.

That said, the girl just has a few more months before she is free of that town. Proms are overrated, anyhow, she probably saved half of her female classmates from the fate of date rape.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax:
it really was. I remember reading it at the end with him sitting there. at the bottom of the sea. while the world tuned to ice.

I just got goosebumps.

@SanFranLefty:
what a great idea. Black Prom Party 2010

@Capt Howdy: Well, here’s what I noticed:

“Oh, my God. That’s really messed up because the message they are sending is that if they have to let gay people go to prom that they are not going to have one,” she said. “A bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this.”

They’re not hating her for being gay, or having a girlfriend. They’re hating her for (at best) fucking up the prom. But even that’s not capital-H Hate, but colloquial “everybody hates me now” hate.

At this distance, and filtered through a USA Today story, it seems like there’s a lot of presumed acceptance buried in that line. Which is a vast improvement. Especially for Mississippi.

@nojo:

I dunno about relying on the enlightend attitudes of Generation Y(?).

Mr. OA has a 16 year-old brother and based on what he’s told me, I can confirm that kidz today have their heads as firmly up their asses as they always have.

@Original Andrew: Fair enough. I definitely don’t have any first- or second-hand knowledge there.

@mellbell: It’s laughable that they try to link proms with the “educational process”. I went to mine in the 70s, and I can tell you with no uncertainty that the only thing I learned was how how you could get so many 17 year olds to spend so much money on such ugly rental outfits.

Well, that and “don’t drink tequila if you expect to get laid”, but that actually was educational.

@Nabisco: I got stuck in the mud when we were headed to a friend’s house with our dates* after the junior prom. Definite moodkiller. I skipped my senior prom the following year and worked a shift as a projectionist at the local theater so my brother could go to his junior prom.

* My friend’s date wore her Darth Vader head as we cruised the plaza downtown on the way to dinner. Her sister went on to design costumes for X-Men, etc. My date went on the give me nothing but grief over the next couple of years. She never finished college and ended up marrying a guy who owned a liquor store.

We had two proms at my high school in the 90s. The Junior Prom was kind of a starter event where you could try out your moves for your Senior Prom the next year (and figure out who had the best weed, who’d be 18 next year and could rent a hotel room, etc.)

My friends and I all went as a big group both times, so I don’t really remember having a date per se, and it made renting the mandatory trashy limo hella cheap and fun fun fun!

Retro 70s and 80s fashions were HUUUUGGE back then, and our outfits came from thrift stores–I think my leisure suit cost $3! Holy cotton-poly knit! I wonder if I still have it!

Wait now, I’ve been away a while so I may be forgetting but… this Mississippi… this is a place in the US? It’s not just a made up place like Oz? Because it sure sounds like fiction.

@Capt Howdy: Dude. AI. Spoiler alert. Hello?

But also, Satyricon. Recently re-saw it and it’s better than I remembered. I keep thinking it could make such a great theatre piece. You should read the novel. I know I can seem pompous and perhaps a tad opinionated but trust me on this. You will find that Trimalchio’s feast does somewhat outstay its welcome but you will find yourself in a world in which manlove is as natural as breathing. You know, like real life. It’s short – we only have a tiny fragment of the original novel – and astonishingly alive. The film brings a post-pagan morality to bear on what is in the novel a world of sensation. It’s a hoot.

By the way, I was in a production of Hamlet with Martin Potter. I was a big tough soldier in chain mail. He was small and exquisitely formed. Couldn’t act for shit but his hair was so pretty you just wanted to take him home and give him shampoos. Speaking of couldn’t act for shit, Jane Seymour was Ophelia. She also had beautiful hair (it’s why she was cast in that Bond film). Of the two I spent my time watching Martin. He was prettier and didn’t bite his bottom lip (though others might want to) to indicate emotion.

Also, you do have to find those prom photos and post them. Srsly dude.

PS. Try being a vegetarian in Vienna. They look at you like you’re crazy. Today I ate eggs. Well, some egg. A little. But I turned down the ham in a restaurant dating from the 1600s. The waiter (not, surprisingly, an out-of-work actor) was shocked.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax:

They couldn’t even remake V: The Miniseries for shit today. The miniseries was, of course, based on the novel It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis.

The 1983 miniseries opens with a dedication to resistance fighters everywhere–can’t imagine that’ll fly today in a right-wing nation currently conducting two internationally condemned occupations. The whole plot, with the propaganda and control of the media, the Visitors working up the absurd “conspiracy of scientists” to turn the public against anyone who may have the technical knowledge to expose them, etc, hits too close to home for the powers-that-be today, perhaps. The new V 2009-10 is like some lame late 90s corporate espionage shit.

It’s basically like someone watched that 1983 miniseries, read It Can’t Happen Here and then used both as a blueprint for ru(i)nning our nation for the last decade. Not that the majority of the public ever noticed. Terrah terrah terrah!! Boo!!

You poor darlings and your proms.

What is it about the States makes its children act out these horrifying tribal bonding rituals with their public shunning (geek can’t get date – not you, noje – we hate geek.) and shaming (cum on dress – slut: cum on tux – score!) so they can pretend to maturity? The only ritual I, as a free and proud Limey, had to put up with was being spanked. And spanked and spanked. Oh yes. On the bum, on the hand, whatever, it’s all good. It can only improve a young boy’s character and all-around mental health. There should be more spanking in the States. Dobson got it right. Spank ‘em young, spank ‘em hard. Not thinking of Johnnie now because he is dead to me. Spanking is best done post-puberty when it’ll be most appreciated by the spankee. Spanking is why English men are so socially adept and secure in their sexuality. Spanking is what rules Britannia. Oh yeah.

@redmanlaw: Highlights of mine: driving my dad’s nifty sports car to pick up my date and go real fast to the restaurant where we met friends. Adult beverages. Watching our hometown boxing hero win the heavyweight title at the bar rather than dance…dude, guys don’t dance. Weed, and more adult beverages. Driving that fast car to the beach for what was supposed to be a watch-the-sunrise session with the group, and – apparently – date on date action. Drank tequila as others watched “Love Boat” and other shite. Puked and passed out. Woke up to my date really pissed and realized I had totally missed my chance.

We had a “sophmore hop” that was even more laughable. The band playing “Ziggy Stardust” was the only highlight, other than that my date had fantastic boobs. My dad drove us, and had to remind me to walk her to the door (she lived across the street, so it just didn’t seem rational). Fortunately we hooked up later in our 20s, when I could better appreciate her many qualities.

@Benedick von Trapp:

What! No soy-sausage or fakin’ bacon in Austria?? Hrrumph, I say. I’ve long-suspected that’d be an international-travel problemo.

@Original Andrew: Not so far. It’s mucho with the baby cow dragged from its mother and slaughtered, drained of blood, and sliced in bits: aka wiener schnitzle. But not so much with the fakin schnitzle. I found arabs today opened my mouth and begged them to feed me falafel. They were only too happy to oblige.

@Tommmcatt Say Relax: Or “Cruising,” a “serious” movie, which also features a fisting scene.

@Benedick von Trapp: Mr. Benedick, I went to high school in the south, and I was paddled, it was a regular form of punishment, in the late 70s.

The “Dean,” someone just below the principle, he was also the football coach, would tell you to bend over his desk, and put your hands on the other end of the desk, so you were sprawled over the desk, then he would take a “paddle,” its just like a cricket bat, but its got holes drilled into it, so that there is no cushion of air when it hits your ass, and he would raise it shoulder high and hit you on the ass, with a full swing, it hurt like hell, it was no love tap, I got 3 hits, for chewing gum, kids who skipped or got caught smoking in the restroom, could get as much as 5 or 10. It hurts to sit down, afterward, it hurt for a day or two.

That was the reality, in Florida in 1977.

@Benedick von Trapp:
I just ordered the book from amazon.
and sorry but if I spoiled AI for you, I did you a favor.
I hate that movie and Speigleberber for what he did to it.

@Promnight:

and reality in Highland High in the late 60s as well.
got several of those visits with the principal. they were not love taps.

Our favorite lesbian just scored an all-expenses-paid prom in New Orleans for her high school, including transportation. Hmmm, the gym at Itawamba High, or a NOLA hotel?