School Board Cancels Prom Rather Than Allowing Same-Sex Couple

School board members in Fulton, Miss., decided to cancel the senior prom at Itawamba Agricultural High School rather than let a lesbian student take her girlfriend to the dance.

Now 18-year-old Constance McMillen says she fears retaliation from her classmates.

"The message they are sending is that if they have to let gay people go to prom that they are not going to have one," she tells the Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Miss.

"A bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this, so in a way it's really retaliation," she adds.

The American Civil Liberties Union in Mississippi has taken up McMillen's cause.

School officials in Fulton (a town of about 4,00 people in the northeast corner of the state) circulated a memo Feb. 5 telling students that same-sex couples would not be allowed at the prom.

In an ACLU press release, McMillen reports meeting with the assistant principal and later the district superintendent. She says she was told she could not attend the prom with her girlfriend or show up wearing a tuxedo.

And no matter what they did, McMillen says in the press release, she was told they would be thrown out if their presence made any other students "uncomfortable."

READ MORE HERE @ PARENTDISH