Hide the young’uns and the womenfolk. The “Everything’s A Right Brigade” is back.
This posse saddled up some time in the late 1960s or early 1970s and has been riding roughshod over the nation ever since. First they rooted around in what they called the “penumbra” of the U.S. Constitution and yanked out a “right to privacy.” That gave us the horrendous Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.
The “right to privacy” eventually morphed into “a woman’s right to choose.” Using the term “right to privacy,” you see, made it difficult for the “Everything’s A Right” minions to justify poor women using public funds to pay for their abortions.
It’s a hard sell, convincing people that public monies should be used to pay for the consequences of some very private acts.
Once it was decided that each woman had a “right to choose,” it was just a short step to the next one: The “right” to have our tax dollars pay for the abortions of poor women. What we’ve had since is a nation run amok with rights, with scarcely a mention of that other “r” word: responsibility.
Indeed, if you so much as dare to even mumble the word “responsibility,” someone will accuse you of “blaming the victim.” We’ve now become a nation of victims claiming all sorts of rights, not a nation of citizens obligated to accept responsibilities.
Enter Constance McMillen, the latest poster girl for the “Everything’s A Right” crowd. Ms. McMillen is 18 and a senior at Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton, Miss. Judging from her newspaper photos, Ms. McMillen is quite a good-looking gal, so much so that another gal thinks the same thing.
That would be Ms. McMillen’s girlfriend, whom Ms. McMillen wanted to bring to the school’s senior prom. The school board nixed the idea; its members didn’t exactly smile on Ms. McMillen’s idea to attend the prom in a tuxedo either. So board members voted that the high school would have no senior prom this year.
Enter — who else? — but the Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, screeching something about Ms. McMillen’s “rights.” OK, so maybe the word “screeching” is a bit of hyperbole, but the ACLU was serious.
According to a USA Today story, “the [Mississippi ACLU] filed suit in federal court against the Itawamba County School District and asked the judge to reverse the school board’s decision to cancel the April 2 dance. The lawsuit alleges district officials have violated McMillen’s First Amendment right of free expression.”
Feeling like you’ve been beamed up to Planet Weirdo yet? This is utter nonsense.
Officials of the Itawamba County School District have done nothing even remotely like violating Ms. McMillen’s First Amendment right of free expression.” They’ve simply canceled a prom. And they’ve canceled it for everybody, not just Ms. McMillen.
We’ve gone from a “right to privacy” to “a woman’s right to choose” to “a poor woman’s right to public funding for her private abortion” to “a right to free expression by bringing your same-sex date to a prom.”
The ACLU lawsuit will fall flat on its face, for one reason. Most reasonable people know that attending a school prom isn’t a right, but a privilege.
Schools can have proms or not have proms, as either the administration at an individual school or members of a school board see fit. Those same authorities can determine what students can or cannot attend the prom. School officials get to determine all criteria for prom attendance, not students.
And not, you can sure as heck bet, the ACLU.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
