But I tolerate them. Because this country allows you the right to remain uneducated. I don’t embrace this lifestyle, but I tolerate. I expect the same when I kiss a girl.

Interesting. After Ms. McMillen was discriminated against by her school board’s homophobic prom policy and restrictive dress code,
did she approach the student council for help? Did she contact the students on the prom committee for help? Did she contact ANY of her fellow students – or simply launched a legal/media campaign while treating her peers as cardboard cut-outs? It must have been disconcerting, (to say the least!), to have one’s senior prom become the subject of national talk shows, et.al., have cameras shoved into your face while going to school and then have to live in a polarized community and decide between a) a discriminatory prom or b) a media circus prom, or c) don’t go to either. IMHO, Ms. McMillen is more concerned about herself than her classmates!

When you expect people to support you, insisting for them to choose sides ex post facto is at least insensitive, and at worst cynical and manipulative. If faced with the same choice, and the same chronological sequence of events, I’d probably take my prom money, donate it to a worthy charity and tell both sides to shove off.

“It’s so easy to look back and be appalled at the blatant racism that our ancestors either had to deal with or doled out. It’s a lot harder, though, to do so ourselves in our modern context. It’s easy to express outrage from a distance or through the veil of a hundred years; but a lot harder to take a stand on such matters…”

Too true! Too true! So sad that so many people don’t realize THIS is the rights struggle of our generation, and though they may look back in disgust at the racism of the past, their stance on THIS issue reveals where they would have stood, had they lived back then, had they been in the majority. Truly sad.

The part I didn’t understand was this:
“I won’t pretend to know the gay experience, and I won’t feign being an activist. There are far too many brave and dedicated people doing great things for me to be that brazenly insincere.”

Come on, go ahead and be brazen. Speak up. Let’s hear it. We need ALL the straight allies we can get and ya’ll are being MUCH too quiet! Waaay too quiet. Where are you all? Part of the successful strategy of our opponents is framing this as an issue for gays only, depicting gays as a vocal and radical minority. Straight allies speaking up loudly, brazenly, openly for our full equality will break this stupid framing of the issue. So speak the hell up. When good people sit back and do nothing and so on… Anyway, Thank you for your comments and thank you for starting by doing something.

According to the race-based bigots, separating the whites and blacks (and brows/yellows/reds) was the natural order of things. It was “race appropriate”, God’s law, and the law of the land – until we came to our collective senses and ended legal protection for this idiocy.

Do you understand that those who fought school integration in the 1960’s used the same language that you use now to justify your apparent hatred towards the GLBT community? By making posts like yours above, you are proclaiming yourself to be nothing less than a bigot, the same as all the other cowards who came before you. It’s just that the target of your hatred has shifted.

There is a special place in hell for this brand of ignorance. Grow up, wake up and do a little research into what “human rights” actually entail. Globally and intrinsically. You might be surprised.

As for the crux of your argument: “Blacks protested and marched to attain the SAME rights as their white brethren. Gays are protesting for SPECIAL rights. … The rule is gender-appropriate dress, no same-sex dates. This rule applies equally to all students, not just a certain group.”

Firstly, there’s no such thing as “special rights.” Rights are inherent. What you might mean to say is that they want priveleges, except the manner in which you constructed your argument says otherwise.

What I’m reading from your reply is that because the rule only discriminates against homosexual lifestyles, it’s not denying them the same rights afforded heterosexuals. Yet, the limitations placed on dress and more importantly prom dates is discriminatory against homosexuals. That’s like saying segregation wasn’t discriminatory because it applied to all races. Or that any provision saying only people with white skin can old land isn’t discriminatory, because it’s a policy that applies to everyone.

If you don’t think homosexuals are deserving of equal rights or you think homosexuality is wrong, just say so. Don’t church it up with jargon and language that’s so convoluted it contradicts itself, and if you’re going to agree with a discriminatory practice, at the very least you should own up to it.

http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=&sc2=&sc3=&id=103411