Unto others

It’s being reported in a number of places that Constance McMillen, the Mississippi teenager who successfully sued her school because its officials told her not to attend her prom with her girlfriend, was tricked into attending a fake private prom on the same night that her classmates held another private party.

If this is true, it’s pretty sad. Not for Constance, who will go on with her life. It’s sad to think about so many people in one community deliberately ostracizing a teenaged girl just because she’s different from them. Seriously – it takes a lot of people to plan a party. I grew up in a small town, and it’s darn near impossible to think that something as large as a dance for (most of) a high school’s students could go under the radar.

Some of the reports have seven other students showing up at the faux prom, including some disabled students. If THAT’S true, then wow. I shudder to think about how many students at my high school, including me, probably would’ve been excluded if my senior prom had been held privately.

What’s really saddening me is the knowledge that at least some of the people involved in this probably think if themselves as God-fearing Christians. Some of them might even be telling themselves that their religious beliefs are the very reason they need to toss out students like Constance McMillen.

Well, I’m a Christian, too. One of the most beautiful things about my religion is that it centers on a man who intentionally chose to work at the margins of society – the poor, lepers, adulterers and other outcasts. Jesus preached that the most important thing his followers could do was to embrace what he called “the least of these,” and to treat everyone in society – everyone – with the compassion we would ask for ourselves.

What would Jesus do? I can’t believe he’d be at the top-secret “let’s exclude people we don’t like” prom, that’s for damn sure.