HIGH SCHOOL ERASES LESBIAN STUDENT
FROM YEARBOOK -
Daniel Tencer reports:
"Mississippi schools are developing quite a reputation for battling their lesbian students.
"Just weeks after an Oxford-area high school made national news by canceling its prom rather than allowing a lesbian student to attend with a same-sex date, a Jackson-area lesbian high school senior who had been fighting for the right to appear in her yearbook dressed in a tuxedo has found that not only did her school not allow it -- they cut her existence out of the yearbook altogether.
"Not only does Ceara Sturgis' photo not appear in the book, her name isn't even listed.
"'It's like she's nobody there, even though she's gone to school there for 12 years,' the Jackson Free Press quoted Veronica Rodriguez, Sturgis' mother. 'They mentioned none of her accolades, even though she's one of the smartest students there with wonderful grades. They've got kids in the book that have been busted for drugs. There's even a picture of one of the seniors who dropped out of school.'
"Rodriguez added: 'I don't get it. Ceara is a top student. Why would they do this to her?'
"Sturgis discovered last Friday that she had been left out of the yearbook after a six-month-long fight with the school over her wish to appear in a tuxedo in her yearbook photo."
Jupiter Images High school student erases lesbian student from yearbook - what are your comments?
Greg Dempsey
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SECULARHUMANIST
Voice Of The People
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Mississippi schools: No proms, no yearbook pics for lesbians
http://groups.
Voice Of The People
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 -- 2:41 pm
Lisa Derrick at FireDogLake reports that Sturgis' sexuality isn't a problem for her fellow students. "Fellow students nominated her to be prom queen, though she declined because she was concerned about how the administration would react," Derrick reports.
School district officials have said they are well within their rights to reject Sturgis' request. As precedent, they point to a 2004 Florida court decision that allows schools to enforce a dress code for yearbook photos.
But, according to the Free Press, the ACLU has rejected that argument in Sturgis' case because that court case did not deal with students' sexual orientation.
Last month, the ACLU joined Oxford high school senior Constance McMillen in demanding that her school reinstate its senior prom, which the school canceled after finding out McMillen planned to bring a same-sex date.
Instead, the school organized what appeared to have been a "decoy" prom at a local country club. When McMillen arrived, she found she was one of only six students present, including two who have mental disabilities.
It now appears that the Westboro Baptist Church, a notorious anti-gay hate group, plans to picket McMillen's graduation ceremony, according to the New York Daily News.
McMillen has become something of a cause celebre for gay rights advocates. She was presented with a $30,000 scholarship by talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, and was invited to participate in New York's gay pride parade this June.
THIS MOMENTOUS DAY!
ReplyDeleteNot one day in anyone’s life is an uneventful day, no day without profound meaning, no matter how dull and boring it might seem, no matter whether you are a seamstress or a queen, a shoeshine boy or a movie star, a renowned philosopher or a Down’s syndrome child.
Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others, both by conscious acts of will and unconscious example.
Each smallest act of kindness – even just words of hope when they are needed, the remembrance of a birthday, a compliment that engenders a smile – reverberates across great distances and spans of time, affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed, until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away.
Likewise, each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will.
All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined – those dead, those living, those generations yet to come – that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands.
Therefore, after every failure, we are obliged to strive again for success, and when faced with the end of one thing, we must build something new and better in the ashes, just as from pain and grief, we must weave hope, for each of us is a thread critical to the strength – the very survival – of the human tapestry.
Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days for which we, in our dissatisfaction, so often yearn are already with us; all great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in THIS MOMENTOUS DAY! – Rev. H.R. White
Excerpt from Dean Koontz’s book, “From the Corner of His Eye”.
It embodies the idea of how the smallest of acts can have such a profound effect on each of our lives.