With Constance McMillen back in the news again for her recent appearance as a grand marshal in New York City’s Gay Pride March, it’s a perfect opportunity to look at how far the South has come. And yes, I’m serious. There’s this stereotypical notion that everyone living south of the Mason-Dixon line is a bigoted, racist, toothless, cousin-marrying, Republican-loving maniac. However, in the wake of the McMillen tragedy, the South is actually becoming … progressive. Well, kind of.
Mississippi native McMillen, who made national news last year for wanting to go to the prom with the date of her choice, planned on attending her high school prom in a tuxedo with a female date. School officials put the kibosh on this and, following McMillen’s acquisition of ACLU representation, canceled the prom.
Most accounts of the McMillen case describe her as having “divided America,” in the words of the Daily Mail, or as a soldier in the “seemingly unwinnable fight in America’s deep south between gay rights and conservatives,” as the Guardian put it. The Christian Science Monitor called recent conflicts over same-sex dates the newest permutation of the “Dixie prom wars,” referring to the region’s past resistance to racially integrated proms. But, in fact, McMillen’s case, and specifically her school’s refusal to come around, is an anomaly. Her impending trial may be one of the last such battles in the South because, legally at least, the region has acknowledged and protected the rights of LGBT students.
If you think about it, the Itawamba school district is pretty stupid. As Slate points out, similar incidences in states including Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, and Tennessee led to the school board backing down when facing litigation claiming the violation of constitutional rights (I wonder how Janine Turner feels about this?).
One of the Alabama cases, Collins v. Scottsboro Board of Education, was nearly identical to McMillen’s (down to a lesbian student wanting to wear a tuxedo and bring a female date) … but was ultimately handled very differently, with the school eventually forced by an Alabama circuit court to reinstate the prom.
I’m going to assume that the attitude toward the young lady in question in Scottsboro, Alabama, was similar to what McMillen experienced in Mississippi (and I make that assumption based on my general feeling that residents in New Hampshire’s “sister states” of Vermont and Maine view things basically the same way that we in the Granite State do). However, Scottsboro realized that, like it or not, they could not violate a student’s constitutional right.
Therefore, in the name of positive thinking, it’s almost better to think of the Itawamba school board as an anomaly. And, again, a chance for the South to get a bit of good press:
Though McMillen has suffered plenty throughout her ordeal, much of her life is proof that the South is changing culturally as well as legally. This spring, she casually mentioned to radio host Michelangelo Signorile that she is not the only lesbian in the family. Denise McMillen, her mother, who is 37 and lives in southern Mississippi, has openly dated women since her 20s and raised Constance’s 15-year-old younger sister with her partner, Elsa. Her mother is not a gay activist, unless that is what living openly makes you. She works as a waitress and manager at the Whistle Stop Café in Wiggins, Miss., sells Mary Kay cosmetics on the side and refers to herself as a small-town girl.
Denise says her own churchgoing mother accepted her sexual orientation almost immediately and that she has rarely found herself the subject of anti-gay hostility. Constance’s father and his very religious parents have said that while they may not approve of homosexuality generally, they accept Constance as she is. Constance doesn’t recall her classmates at Itawamba High voicing any objection to her sexual orientation until the school canceled the prom. Both Constance and Denise say they have never feared for their safety. If anything, Constance’s family life is an example of how gay people and nontraditional families increasingly get by without much ado in Mississippi.
And then, of course, there’s the point that Constance McMillen was obviously raised with clear eyes and an open mind. If the South was truly as backwards as urban legend has it made out to be, the very essence of Constance McMillen herself would probably be very different:
Though she doesn’t belong to a church, McMillen describes herself as an “open-minded Christian” and a strong believer in monogamy, which she expresses in a distinctly evangelical way. “Actually, I have a promise ring from my girlfriend, and I’m pretty sure that within the next year she’s going to propose. Of course, we wouldn’t get married until she’s 18.” One male student once asked McMillen’s girlfriend, “How can you be redneck and gay at the same time?” which seems tantamount to proof that the woman in front of him had that figured out. McMillen would like to live in Los Angeles when she gets older, but that is due in part to many, many hours spent watching The L Word. Her girlfriend says she doesn’t want to come because she can’t hunt there.
I’ve never been to the South beyond driving through on the way to Florida. What I know of a region much maligned by us northerners (“They’re wicked wacked out down South!” [Ed. Note: No, we're wicked wacked out in the North ... ]) is gleaned from movies, television shows, and books, especially the works of Pat Conroy and Anne Rivers Siddons. I’m starting to realized how truly unfair this is.
And so Candace McMillen’s nightmarish experience continues to be a valuable lesson — to those in the South about the importance of the U.S. Constitution (and the rights provided therein) and to those of us that may have thought of the South as almost a caricature of human nature. There is still a lot of learning left to do, but it’s refreshing to see forward-moving steps.
