On Constance McMillen and Being Yourself

My sister Kerry, who is seven years younger than me, always wanted to be just like me.  She liked the same movies that I did, knew the words to the same songs and dressed in the same clothing style as me.  When she was nine and I was sixteen, she even had a crush on one of my best friends, writing hilarious diary entries about how she and Bob would hold hands and go walking on the beach.  Kerry was probably the only person to ever think I was cool, and she would tell me long stories about how she was mapping her life out so it would exactly mirror mine.

What happens when that little girl grows up and realizes that she's not just like her older sister?  On Christmas Eve when Kerry was seventeen, she came into my room and crawled into my bed, crying hysterically.  She told me that she was dating a woman and had been for a couple of years, and that they were fighting and she was scared and upset.  I watched her studying my reaction and waiting for any signs of disapproval or disgust.  That was the first day I realized how intense it must be to be a parent.  I looked at my sister and knew that she was going to have a rough road ahead of her and at the same time felt rage boil right below the surface, imagining how I'd murder anyone who tried to make her feel different and wrong for living her life the way she was born to be.

People do not choose their sexual orientation.  This has been proven time and time again in study after study.  My sister was born with a desire to date women.  She didn't sit down and choose to be gay one afternoon any more than I chose to be straight.  It's part of who she is and the fact that there are people in the world who hold that against her and tell her she's sick and disgusting and wrong and going to hell because of it makes me want to explode.

So that brings me to the story of Constance McMillen, the lesbian student from Mississippi who was barred from her Prom.  I'm sure you've heard by now that her school district was forced to allow her and her girlfriend to attend their dance, but the parents of her classmates arranged an alternate party on the same night.  Constance and her girlfriend and five handicapped students were the only ones who attended the actual school Prom.

What an excellent example these parents set for their children.  They taught them a way to get around discrimination laws and to make someone who is already a social outcast feel even worse about herself.  I can just imagine them laughing and planning this whole thing out, chuckling about how they'd show her, this little lesbian teenager.  No, Constance, you can't be normal and have this stupid right of passage that every teenager goes through.  You'll never be one of us, so enjoy the empty dance floor and be sure to drink plenty of punch, there's going to be leftovers.

I wish these people could step back from their ridiculous beliefs and realize that Constance McMillen and her girlfriend have families who love them.  They were little girls running around and pretending they were grown up women, putting on their mom's high heels and necklaces and thinking they looked glamorous.  Maybe Constance has a sister who she loved and hero-worshipped and tried to imitate every aspect of her life, until the day when she found the courage to abandon that childish plan and to live her life as the woman she was born to be, a woman who thinks and feels just like her peers, but who just happens to be in love with another woman.  Why can't the people of her town see that she is not some pariah or diseased, sin-addled monster but rather she's someone's daughter, granddaughter, sister and friend?

I look at my sister and I'm so proud that she's nothing like me.  I watch her walk into family weddings with her girlfriend and I'm happy that I have a family who loves and respects her for who she is, no matter how different that is from what society's ideal might be.  They don't hold seperate parties only for her and tuck her away in a school basement.

I hope with all my heart that Constance leaves her small town and finds her own tribe.  Prom is never the highlight of anyone's life, Constance.  Please realize that not everyone is as shallow as the people who perpetrated this cruelty towards you and be yourself, no matter what.  Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, but authenticity and courage shine a heck of a lot brighter.