This is wrong on so many counts. Wrong because the school district is playing the card of a rule that is outdated. Same sex dates are not allowed? When I went to prom, you had the choice of either going with a date or going with a group of friends. What’s the difference? Mississippi is poorly represented by their choice to allow this injustice to occur. It truly causes me to question the part of the country I live in if this is the way our children are treated. One might tell me to move (that wouldn’t be the first time) and believe me I’m not just considering it.

The solution would be for Constance and her supporters to have their own prom http://www.abc26.com/news/local/wgno-news-hotel-owner-offers-to-host-prom,0,7024361.story but my question is, where are her classmates? Why are they allowing this? Where are the parents supporting her?

The Sugar Mill in New Orleans is offering up their hotel for the Mississippi students to have prom. I’ve been to the Sugar Mill it’s filled with good old southern hospitality. The kind that is sweet and kind and loving. The kind that welcomes a young girl who just wants to go to her prom and bring her love interest. That’s the south I live in. Not the old southern hospitality where one was welcomed if you were a WASP and everyone went to church on Sunday and didn’t speak about what happened Saturday night. That is out, gone, good riddance. Southerners are now atheists, homosexuals, we marry or we don’t and we love our children for who they are. We are becoming what we should have always been. The better part of us anyway.

My advice to Constance is to have her own Prom wherever she likes. It’s nice that the Sugar Mill offered, but maybe Constance would prefer to be somewhere she was more a part of the norm not the oddity. If the Sugar Mill can offer that good, but I’m willing to wager some money there will be protests, picketers and anti-same sex Americans playing their freedom of speech card. It turns my stomach and I would love to be wrong. Maybe that happens everywhere, I hope I’m wrong about that too.

I think prom is an outdated part of school that should go away. It just doesn’t appeal to me now and it didn’t when I was in high school. I went every year I was in high school, but I never came away with any really great memories that I couldn’t have gotten any other day of the week. If prom is going to segregate, do away with it.

I am certain there is no god, I am certain many of the religious don’t believe in their god. It may be a comforting fairy tale others use to face the one certainty in life, death. Here’s what I see; a 17 year old spending her final hours questioning why her god chose her to die. She is unable to embrace her life because her family and friends dangled a fairy in front of her in a feeble attempt to save her. Now, she is filled with regret. She sees what is not coming. Shame on you all for taking pieces of her life for an empty promise.

I hope she finds comfort in the final few hours.

I’ll get to my point. Sports that are judged not by a clock, or by who can knock their opponent out with a punch, are judged by people. Yes, there are standards, yes, there are rules. In the meantime, find me a judge that doesn’t weigh his or her own personal value set when deciding whether or not to add or deduct that half a point from the score and I will walk down Main Street bare. All judges do it. It is impossible to find a panel of 6-10 people who all claim objectivity to not favor “the hometown girl/boy” or the Skater who has the best agent or publicist.  Sometimes that gives the Johnny Weir’s of the world the competitive edge, and sometimes it’s the deal breaker. It is the difference between silver or gold. Maybe the judge is a staunch American peta member who takes points off for Johnny’s fur trimmed costume. What about the judge who is from Russia that has a brother who is gay and he gives Johnny that extra 0.5 for challenging the system. Consider the judge from wherever that took the position as judge just to wield the gavel of the digital point pad to let the world know they are an Olympic judge. I see it happen at a local, regional, state and national level, the Olympics are no different.

I cheer for the Johnny Weir’s of the world for my own personal reasons. I am also leary of those who say “look at me I’m different” only because I choose to look beyond the outer layer. I find when you peel back the layers, the person is much more/less complex than is truly portrayed.