Civil Rights Movement Redux

People often ask me why I care so much about attaining equal rights for LGBT people when I’m not either L, G, B or T myself. Answer? This is the civil rights issue of our times. To a large extent, our country’s history is about welcoming various populations to the privileges and protections that come with being a full citizen of the United States. When my parents were my age, legal discrimination of non-white people was the leading civil rights battle (and I in no way want to suggest that we’re past societal racism). For us today, it’s legal inequality for people who are gay and transgender.

This story of a high school student in Mississippi reminded me a lot of the stories I’ve heard about racial integration a generation ago. Constance McMillan’s school district would rather cancel her school’s entire senior prom than let her attend with her girlfriend. That’s no different than the public pool operators who closed down rather than let black kids swim there.

Here’s what I don’t understand: school officials in Fulton, Miss., say that Constance and her girlfriend are a potential “distraction.” That’s an officialism that should be familiar to any former student whose personality varied one iota from the principal’s preferred status quo. Wearing certain clothes is a “distraction.” Having blue hair is a distraction. The student in my older sister’s class who didn’t bow her head during the graduation prayer? Distraction. My classmate who wasn’t allowed to appear in our class photo because he wasn’t wearing a necktie? Distraction. “Distraction” is basically code for “something we, the people in charge, don’t like so therefore you can’t do it.”

Seriously, does this idiot administration honestly think there are people in this school who don’t already know that their classmate is gay? This isn’t about “distraction,” it’s about disapproval.

The good news for Constance McMillan is that she will graduate; she will move on with her life better and stronger. And hopefully her classmates will grow from this as well.

Unfortunately, what’s happening to her isn’t trivial. Right now, in this country, gay people aren’t protected from discrimination in the way that people of different ethnicities or religions are. Right now, in this country, transgender people are something like 12 times more likely to be a victim of a violent crime than I am. And it goes without saying that same-sex partners are prohibited in most places in America from being full partners in the ways that straight couples take for granted.

The last generation’s movement was about a lot more than swimming pools. And this is about far more than a prom.