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Kim Voynar

By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com

Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to the Prom

And now, a brief pause while we delve into the realm of the political …
As I’m sure most of you folks know, there’s been this little brouhaha stirring in Mississippi around Constance McMillen, a teenage lesbian who wanted to bring her girlfriend to prom and gender-bend by wearing a tux herself. Now, this is a pretty common thing here in Seattle, and may be in your neck of the woods, but down there in Mississippi the principal and school board freaked the hell OUT about it, and actually canceled prom so as to not allow this miscreant rebel of a teenager to bring her filthy lesbianism into a hallowed institution of clean-cut fun like the prom. Her presence with her girlfriend, it seems, was going to be just too darn distracting.
In his Savage Love column this week, the lovely and eloquent Dan Savage asked his readers (and whoo-boy, are there a lot of you pervy types out there who like to read his advice on fetishes, three-ways, potentially gay husbands and other such deviant-ness) to show Constance that she is supported by many people by doing any or all of these things:
“E-mail, call, and fax Itawamba Schools superintendent Teresa McNeece (tmcneece@itawamba.k12.ms.us, phone 662-862-2159 ext. 14, fax 662-862-4713) and Itawamba Agricultural principal Trae Wiygul (twiygul@itawamba.k12.ms.us, 662-862-3104). Then join the Facebook page “Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to Prom.” And, finally, make donations to the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition (www.mssafeschools.org), which is organizing an alternate prom that will welcome all students, and make a larger donation to the ACLU LGBT Project (www.tinyurl.com/yl9mvkb).
Call, write, fax, donate. Constance needs to know that there are people all over the world who are on her side. And, more importantly, Itawamba County Schools needs to know that we’re not going to let them get away with this. Be respectful, but be relentless. Let’s show these bigots what a real distraction looks like. Get ’em.”
Me again. You’ll find the letter I sent after the jump. Read it, be entertained, and then please take the time to support gay rights in general and Constance in particular by writing your own letter, joining the Facebook page, and making a donation. Dan is right … we need to send a message, not just to the school board and principal, but more importantly to Constance — and all the gay and lesbian teens out there — that they are NOT alone, that they are not bad people, or deviants who should be discriminated against, that they are okay. Please join me.


Dear Teresa McNeese and Trae Wiygul,
Greetings from Seattle. I hope you’re both having a pleasant week. I’m sure it’s better than the time Constance McMillen has been having as a target of bullying, what with all her classmates misdirecting anger that should be directed squarely at the folks who made the bigoted decision to cancel prom rather than allow a lesbian student to bring her date than at her for being brave and honest and true to who she is. God forbid the students of Mississippi should learn such a thing as tolerance, am I right?
I know, you’re thinking, why does this liberal bitch from Seattle have anything to say about our little prom? Sheesh, all we were trying to do was keep one deviant teenager from besmirching and distracting our nice little prom with all her lesbian-ness, and prevent prom from being a distraction, and this pain-in-the-butt kid had to make it a whole political issue (nevermind that it very much IS a political issue …). Because prom’s not already a distraction, what with all the money spent on fancy dresses, tuxes and limos, not to mention the drinking and drug use that inevitably happens at such dances (what?! you didn’t realize that?!) not to mention all that nice, clean-cut underage sex those nice heterosexual teens are having. What, you didn’t know that either? Geez, how do you think your state earned the lofty title of highest teen birth rate?
Why, I bet you’re thinking, holy crap! We had no idea what a bigger distraction would come from all these gosh-darned liberals sticking their noses into our Mississippi business. It’s almost as bad as when that uppity actor Morgan Freeman made a big stink about a segregated prom at a Mississippi high school way back in 1954! Oh, wait, that was just a couple years ago, wasn’t it? Silly me. But perhaps you’ve never seen Prom Night in Mississipi, the documentary that tells that tale. Whoo-boy, that Morgan Freeman. Gets a big old head from his success as an actor, and thinks he has something to say about white proms and black proms. The nerve.
Doesn’t this whole bigoted, discrimination vibe you have going get exhausting? And, well, distracting?
By the way, as I’m sure you know, Ellen DeGeneres (you know, that reprobate, mouthy lesbian woman negatively influencing our youth through her TV show and presence on American Idol) offered to pay for a prom herself, but Constance, who has so much more bravery and dignity as a young woman than folks like yourselves will ever muster up in your lifetimes, turned that offer down, because she wants her school do the right thing. That’s why uppity liberals like me, who don’t even live in Mississippi, are supporting her by sending you letters, and by making donations to the Mississippi Safe Schools Coaltion and to the ACLU’s LBGT project on her behalf. And joining the Facebook page Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to the Prom, which at current count has over 379,000 members who support the right of gay and lesbian students to be open and honest about who they are — even at prom. Yes, even if it makes narrow-minded students and staff feel uncomfortable. Perhaps especially if it makes them uncomfortable.
Remember when letting those little Negro children attend schools with nice white kids felt uncomfortable? When it was uncomfortable and distracting to let those darn uppity black folks sit on the bus, drink from the same water fountains, swim in the same pools? Ah, for the good old days, when nice white bigoted folks in Mississippi could just go about their business and discriminate freely without liberals sticking their stupid liberal, East-and-West-coast noses into Mississippi business. Distracting, isn’t it?
Of course, you could just back down and do the right thing, and save your school district some money fighting a discrimination lawsuit. That might mean admitting you were wrong, even if it took a big, public show of support for Constance to bring it about. But it would also send a message to your students, and to the world, that you are not the ass-backwards idiots you are making yourselves appear to be.
Sincerely
Kim Voynar

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

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~ David Simon