The Great Lesbian Prom Date Threat

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I bet John Hughes could have made a great movie out of this. From the ACLU summary of the case:

The ACLU wants Itawamba County School District officials in Fulton, Mississippi to reverse their decision to forbid a lesbian student from attending prom with her girlfriend and from wearing a tuxedo to the prom. Constance McMillen, a student at Itawamba Agricultural High School, came to the ACLU for help after school officials told her that she could not come to prom with her girlfriend, also a student at IAHS, and that if they arrived separately but slow-danced together they might be thrown out. In response to a letter demanding that the school allow Constance to attend prom with her girlfriend, the school board issued a statement saying that they were canceling prom for all students.

The school board statement, according to the AP, does not mention McMillen as the cause of the cancellation, though it does mention unspecified “distractions.” School district policy requires dates of the opposite sex.

It turns out this is not a new issue. After the jump: a video of the case of Cynthia Stewart, who successfully got her Alabama school to back down from a similar cancellation threat, allowing her to take her girlfriend to prom. 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voORx_HJQuk&hl=en_US&fs=1&]