A disgusting duplicity: Homophobic parents host secret prom
According to The Advocate, and the young woman herself:
To avoid Constance McMillen bringing a female date to her prom, the teen was sent to a "fake prom" while the rest of her class partied at a secret location at an event organized by parents.
McMillen tells The Advocate that a parent-organized prom happened behind her back — she and her date were sent to a Friday night event at a country club in Fulton, Miss., that attracted only five other students. Her school principal and teachers served as chaperones, but clearly there wasn't much to keep an eye on.
"They had two proms and I was only invited to one of them," McMillen says. "The one that I went to had seven people there, and everyone went to the other one I wasn’t invited to." (Full story here.)
Disgusting duplicity. How dare they! I guess homophobia hurts straight kids only until their homophobic parents intervene. Public life is - unfortunately for them - too equality-oriented for their tastes. The discrimination must be inserted intentionally and in private.
Sorry for never getting back
Sorry for never getting back on that military cult thingy... I've pretty much been off the internet since then... but anyway...
While it's obvious from the fact that there was a great deal of deception involved and people are making a lot of noise about it that something is seriously wrong, I can't really put the issue into perspective. I barely know what a prom is, much less the social significance involved. I never went to high school - got a GED and skipped straight to college. (And then dropped out of college to take care of my parents. But that's beside the point.) I haven't seen one on movies or TV, not that I have time to watch very much of either. Never really interacted with older teens, not a subject which comes up in conversation, etc. So if some other poster could tell me a bit about why going to a prom is so important in the first place, then maybe I could make more sense of the issue.
the significance of the prom
On the importance of prom:
I'm so glad you asked, actually. So many things just get taken for granted. I'd love for other readers to offer their ideas about why the prom is such an important high school ritual. Here are just a few thoughts:
1. It is a ritual. Rituals are important as rites of passage, as markers of social status, and as bonding opportunities. Often couples identify prom as a significant marker of their relationship, there are kings and queens of the prom, there are class songs, and it can be a significant source of shared emotion.
2. Following on the first point, much of high school is geared toward the senior year rituals, especially prom and graduation, though there may be others. To have it eliminated is not just an in-the-moment issue but a moment when the assumptions of the previous years get called into question.
3. Prom in some ways is like practice adulthood - even like practice marriage. There are tuxes and gowns and limos, photos and flowers. This is not to say that the people who go to the prom together expect to get married to each other, but that it's kind of like the late-teen version of the little kid playing dress up in mom's high heels and lipstick: It's a way to practice for a later role while still retaining the current one.
4. It's an affirmation of relationships: While I understand from my students that often people go to the prom as friends, going to the prom is also seen as a marker of the seriousness of a romantic relationship. To be denied the opportunity to publicly display the seriousness of one's relationship is to be declared unequal to others.
Those are just a few thoughts. I'd love to hear what other readers think is the significance of the prom. Why does is it important?
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
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