Disputes over same-sex couples roil prom plans

With high school prom season fast approaching, two small towns, one in Indiana and one in Missouri, are getting heat over same-sex couples attending the event. In Indiana, a teacher proposed that there be a “traditional” prom, which would ban same-sex couples from participating. In Missouri, the Southern Poverty Law Center has threatened legal action if a small district does not change its policy of banning same-sex couples from their prom.

Both AP stories make for interesting reading, and are presented below.

Plans for prom barring gays rocks Ind. community 
PAMELA ENGEL,Associated Press

SULLIVAN, Ind. (AP) — A small Indiana community best known for its parks and corn festival has become the center of a national discussion about intolerance over a group's plans to host a "traditional" prom that bansgay students.

Residents and officials in Sullivan, a city of about 4,200 near the Illinois border, are scrambling to escape the uncomfortable spotlight cast when a teacher supporting the "traditional" prom for Sullivan High School said she believes people choose to be gay and that gays have no purpose in life.

"I just ... I don't understand it," Diana Medley, referring to gays, told Terre Haute television station WTWO.

The comments by Medley, a special education teacher in a neighboring school district, have gone viral and sparked online campaigns to have her fired. A petition on Change.org calling for her dismissal had generated more than 17,500 signatures from as far away as the United Kingdom as of Thursday, and a Facebook page supporting a prom that includes all students had more than 27,000 likes.

The fallout has surprised many residents, who say the issue roiling the community in an area known for coal mining and attractive parks is being blown out of proportion.

"We are conservative around here. That's just the way of this town," said Nancy Woodard, 60, who owns the Hidden Treasure Exchange store. "In any town in this county, you'll find four or five churches no matter how small the town. ... The Bible is a big belief system here.

"Everybody has jumped on this little town. To me, there isn't any need for it," she said.

Sullivan High School Principal David Springer said talk of the "traditional" prom began in January, after a student began circulating a petition demanding that gays be allowed to participate in the grand march at Sullivan's April 27 prom. The "traditional" prom would not be sanctioned by the district and wouldn't be held at the school.

Springer said the school, which has 545 students in grades 9-12, has never banned same-sex pairs from the event.

"I've been to eight grand marches and ... we always had girls go out together, and a lot of times they just didn't have a date," Springer said. "Our prom is open to all of our students."

But others say calls for a "traditional" prom, fueled by Medley's comments, speak to a larger climate in whichgay students fear being bullied and aren't welcome.

"When someone says your kid has no purpose, how do you think that makes a parent feel?" asked Annette Gross, Indiana state coordinator for Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), whose son came out at age 19.

Aaron Gettinger, a 20-year-old Stanford University student who graduated from Sullivan High in 2011, said he isn't surprised by the push for a "traditional" prom that would ban gay students. He said he was bullied daily because he is gay and encountered viewpoints similar to those espoused by Medley.

"It's just the way that it is," he said. "It's part of a way of thinking that the rest of the country needs to know still exists and goes on."

Organizers of the "traditional" prom declined to comment, and it's unclear whether the event will still happen.

School officials and the minister of a church where planners met Sunday have worked to distance themselves from the flap.

Dale Wise, the church's senior minister at Sullivan First Christian Church, said his church turned off its fax machine and took its website offline Tuesday because both were the target of hate mail and pornographic messages.

Wise said the planning group met at the church because it allows community meetings to take place there but the church "had no affiliation whatsoever" with the "traditional" prom effort.

Springer said his staff has been inundated with calls and emails about Medley, whom he noted doesn't work for his school. She teaches in the Northeast School Corp., a neighboring district.

Neither Medley nor Northeast officials returned calls seeking comment. The district issued a statement this week saying Medley was "expressing her First Amendment rights" and that "the views expressed are not the views of the Northeast School Corporation and/or the Board of Education."

Sullivan isn't alone in its struggles over how to handle same-sex couples at proms. A small southeast Missouri school district is facing a threat of legal action over a policy barring same-sex couples from attending prom together.

The Southern Poverty Law Center on Thursday accused the Scott County Central School District in Sikeston of discrimination and gave the district until Feb. 25 to revise the school dance policy or face a potential lawsuit.

Sullivan High School freshman Te'Airra Walters, 15, said it shouldn't be a big deal for a same-sex couple to attend prom together. She said she doesn't like the negative attention the controversy has attracted.

"People from other schools around here are saying Sullivan is trashy," she said. "I think it's pretty much ridiculous."

Associated Press writer Charles Wilson in Indianapolis contributed to this story.

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Legal action threatened over Mo. prom policy 
JIM SALTER,Associated Press

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A small school district in southeast Missouri is facing a threat of legal action over a policy barring same-sex couples from attending prom together.

The Southern Poverty Law Center on Thursday accused the Scott County Central School District in Sikeston of discrimination and gave the district until Feb. 25 to revise the school dance policy or face a potential lawsuit. District superintendent Alvin McFerren declined comment.

The district has one elementary school and one high school that serve a combined 330 students.

Stacy Dawson, a junior at Scott County Central High School, sought permission to bring his boyfriend to the prom on April 20, but according to the SPLC, was told district policy prohibits same-sex couples from attending school dances. The policy states that students "will be permitted to invite one guest, girls invite boys and boys invite girls."

The SPLC says the student told the nonprofit civil rights organization that the school board refused to change the policy.

SPLC attorney Alesdair Ittelson said the prom policy is "blatantly discriminatory and in violation of (the student's) constitutional rights."

"This unlawful policy reminds us that anti-gay sentiment still serves as a platform for schools to deny the rights of same-sex couples," Ittelson said in a statement.

Dawson released a statement saying that prom "is an important milestone in high school, and I would be devastated if I'm not allowed to attend prom with my boyfriend."

"It isn't fair that a school can randomly disregard students' rights because it doesn't agree with who you want to take to prom," the teen said in the statement.

The SPLC's letter to the district cites a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, saying the Iowa case protects a student's rights to free expression.

The letter also makes reference to a Mississippi case in which a federal court ruled that a female student attending prom with a same-sex date "falls squarely within the purview of the First Amendment ..." It mentions a 1980 Rhode Island case as well, which involved a school district having to pay $116,000 for denying a students' right to bring a same-sex date to a school dance.