Constance McMillen, meet Marche Taylor. Americans, gird your loins for a nation where the young’uns run things.
You may have read about McMillen before, either in this column or elsewhere. She’s the 18-year-old senior at Itawamba Agricultural High School in Mississippi who is openly lesbian, wanted to take her girlfriend to the senior prom, and wanted to wear a tuxedo to that prom.
As might be expected, when the Itawamba County School District canceled the prom rather than comply with McMillen’s request, the girl became liberal America’s latest victim du jour. The Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union took up her cause, claiming that her First Amendment rights had been violated.
A federal judge in Mississippi agreed that McMillen’s First Amendment right of “free expression” had been violated, but, in a rare display of judicial restraint, passed on ordering the school district to hold the prom.
Now let’s go back two years and shift the scene to Houston. Marche Taylor doesn’t want to wear a tuxedo to her senior prom. The girl wants to wear a dress. Oh, but what a dress!
You can see this dress — if indeed there is enough of it to be called that — if you Google Taylor’s name. The outfit was scandalous. I would say it made Taylor look like a third-rate hoochie mama, but that would really be unfair to third-rate hoochie mamas.
Taylor tried to crash her prom wearing that “dress.” School officials would have none of it. They ordered Taylor to leave. She balked. School honchos called the cops, who led Taylor away in handcuffs.
This tale of high school senior versus school administrators didn’t make national news in the way that McMillen’s case did. But you can make the argument that if McMillen’s First Amendment right of “free expression” was violated, then so was Taylor’s.
And if Taylor’s was violated, well, then there’s no reason for school officials anywhere in America to have dress codes for proms, is there?
And if Taylor’s was violated, well, then there’s no reason for school officials anywhere in America to have dress codes for proms, is there?
Yes, there will be those who claim that McMillen’s case is different, that she also wanted to bring her girlfriend to the prom and that the Itawamba School District violated her rights as a lesbian. And they’d be right. They’d also be missing the point.
One of those who missed the point was talk show host Ellen DeGeneres. McMillen appeared on DeGeneres’ show (come on, you knew the girl would be on the show even before Ellen did). On the matter of the tuxedo, DeGeneres said sarcastically that the “whole world would have collapsed” if McMillen had shown up at the prom wearing a tuxedo.
Of course it wouldn’t have, but that’s not the point. Actually, there are only two points that matter here:
First, who is in charge? Is it the adults, or youngsters like McMillen and Taylor? Because I’d rather have adults who are occasionally wrong in charge as opposed to youngsters who are only occasionally right.
Second, what about the effect of unintended consequences? (I could argue that the First Amendment restriction on not violating free speech applies only to Congress, but what’s the point? McMillen probably hasn’t read the First Amendment, nor has DeGeneres and, apparently, neither has anyone in the ACLU.)
If Itawamba school officials had granted McMillen’s wish to bring a same-sex date and wear a tuxedo, would that have been the end of it? Prom dress codes in every school district in the nation would have gone the way of the buffalo.
And before too long, quite a few girls would show up at their proms looking like third-rate hoochie mamas.
