DOMA overturned in Massachusetts

Originally published at Socialist Worker.


A FEDERAL judge in Massachusetts, ruling in two related cases, declared the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional on July 8, a victory for supporters of marriage equality.

DOMA, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton, defined marriage as between one man and one woman and allowed states to not recognize same-sex marriages performed legally in other states.

The law denies over 1,100 federal benefits to same-sex couples married in states where gay marriage is legal. These include the right to file joint tax returns (often at a lower rate), share Social Security and food stamps, receive spousal employment benefits (such as health insurance) or sponsor an immigrant spouse for legal residency or citizenship.

In other words, DOMA relegates same-sex couples legally married in states such as Massachusetts to second-class status in the eyes of the federal government.

The first case, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, was filed by a federal employee whose lawyers from Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders argued that because the bill prevented her and her same-sex spouse from receiving federal employment benefits, DOMA denied her equal protection under the law--a violation of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

The second case, Commonwealth v. Health and Human Services, was brought by the state of Massachusetts, which argued that DOMA interferes with a state's right to define marriage as it chooses by requiring it to discriminate against same-sex couples or lose millions of dollars of federal money yearly.

U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Tauro's rulings apply only to same-sex couples married in Massachusetts, and they only declare unconstitutional the part of DOMA that defines marriage as between one man and one woman, so states will still be able to ignore same-sex marriages performed in other states.

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NOW, THE question is whether Barack Obama's Justice Department will appeal the Tauro's decision to a higher court in the federal system.

During the 2008 election campaign, Obama repeated again and again that he opposed DOMA. For example, his campaign Web site declared: "I...believe that the federal government should not stand in the way of states that want to decide on their own how best to pursue equality for gay and
 lesbian couples--whether that means a domestic partnership, a civil union, or a civil marriage."

Candidate Obama went so far as to cite his support for a repeal of DOMA as a reason to choose him over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries: "Unlike Senator Clinton, I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)--a position I have held since before arriving in the U.S. Senate...Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does."

Obama renewed this commitment as president when he spoke at the Human Rights Campaign dinner on the eve of the National Equality March in October 2009.

But despite this record, the Obama Justice Department is widely expected to appeal the decision in the Massachusetts' cases to the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals--and potentially to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The administration claims that it's up to Congress to repeal DOMA, and in the meanwhile, it has to "uphold existing law." The Gay City News explained the administration's tortured logic in defending a law its chief claims to oppose:

[T]he Obama Justice Department devised the bizarre claim that DOMA was an attempt by Congress to preserve the status quo "pending the resolution of a socially contentious debate taking place in the states over whether to sanction same-sex marriage." The government argued that DOMA was necessary "to ensure consistency in the distribution of federal marriage-based benefits," and to avoid the disruptions from having to deal with different definitions of marriage in different states.

If administration officials do appeal the rulings in Massachusetts, it wouldn't be the first time the Obama Justice Department defended DOMA in federal court. In June 2009--within days of Obama declaring LGBT Pride Month--Justice Department lawyers claimed that DOMA was constitutional and non-discriminatory, citing as precedents laws that barred marriage in cases of incest and pedophilia.

Some left-wing commentators think it would be a good thing for the Justice Department to appeal Tauro's decisions, because if the cases go to the Supreme Court and the Court rules against DOMA, it would strike a blow against the marriage ban at the national level, rather than just Massachusetts.

Jim Burroway, editor of Box Turtle Bulletin Web site, makes the case that a Supreme Court decision against DOMA following an appeal by the Justice Department is more likely to succeed than passage of a Congressional repeal, such as the Respect for Marriage Act introduced in 2009 by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.). "With the next Congress likely to be much more hostile to LGBT issues as this Congress," Burroway wrote, "I've got lottery tickets with better odds than Congress repealing DOMA."

But the struggle for marriage equality can't depend on hoping for justice from a federal court system stacked with conservative judges. Nor should we accept a lengthy appeals process that could take years before the Supreme Court rules on DOMA.

Instead, we should use the momentum we have build in the past two years, including the enthusiasm generated by this victory in Massachusetts, to demand full equality now. We should demand that the Obama administration live up to the promises of its president and stop defending DOMA in court, and we should call for Congress to get to work on the job of repealing DOMA once and for all.

Our equality on trial

Originally published at Socialist Worker.


"WE CONCLUDE this trial, Your Honor, where we began. This case is about marriage and equality." So began the closing argument of the lawyer challenging California's Proposition 8, which revoked marriage rights for same-sex couples in California just months after it was made legal.

Perry v. Schwarzenegger, a lawsuit filed on behalf of two same-sex couples, calls on the federal courts to declare Prop 8 unconstitutional. The case got underway in a federal courtroom in January and has stretched on until now. A decision from Judge Vaughn Walker is expected sometime in the coming days and weeks.

Both pro- and anti-LGBT rights groups are looking forward to the ruling with keen anticipation, but everyone realizes there will almost certainly be an appeal of any decision--and the case could well end up before the Supreme Court years from now.

Speaking to a packed courtroom and an overflow crowd, Theodore Olson--formerly a lawyer for the Bush White House, but now arguing in favor of marriage equality--stated that Prop 8 deprived gays and lesbians in California of the "fundamental constitutional right to marry" in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Responding to the anti-marriage equality claim that marriage should be restricted to "one man, one woman" because that's "tradition," Olson pointed out the landmark Loving v. Virginia that overturned legal bans on interracial marriage in 1967, and the Supreme Court decision in 1954 Brown v. Board of Education overturning racial segregation in schools:

"We've always done it that way"...is the corollary to "Because I say so."...You can't have continued discrimination in public schools because you have always done it that way...You can't have continued discrimination between races on the basis of marriage because you have always done it that way."

Both the Brown and Loving decisions were based on the Fourteenth Amendment, which in 1868 overruled the Dred Scott Decision that held that African Americans "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

Charles Cooper, the lawyer defending Prop 8 on behalf of the original supporters of the measure, insisted that the same-sex marriage ban should be upheld because "the central purpose of marriage in virtually all societies and at all times has been to channel potentially procreative sexual relationships into enduring stable unions."

Ironically, Cooper's support for social engineering by the state regarding sexual relationships contrasts with an influential Yes on 8 ad during the 2008 campaign, which quoted San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom saying that same-sex marriage would pass "whether you like it or not"--in other words, an appeal to fears of state interference and arrogance.

Cooper also stated that the purpose of heterosexual marriage is to provide an "enduring and stable family environment for the sake of raising the children so that essentially the society itself...doesn't have to step in and take upon its own shoulders the obligations to help in the raising of those children."

There couldn't be a clearer illustration of the fact that the anti-marriage equality forces don't care about protecting California's children. They want to preserve the traditional nuclear family, where women are responsible for the burden of raising those children.

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SOME SUPPORTERS of marriage equality have criticized the strategy of filing suit against Prop 8 because the case, even if successful at a lower level, will probably end up before a Supreme Court stacked with right-wing justices.

But court cases don't take place in a vacuum. It's also critical what happens in the streets--a point underlined by Judge Walker's question to Olson about whether there was a "political tide" in favor of same-sex marriage that would make the Supreme Court more likely to uphold a decision to overturn Prop 8.

In 2008, California became the second state after Massachusetts to legalize same-sex marriage as a result of a California Supreme Court decision that denying gays and lesbians equal marriage rights violated the state constitution.

The decision came in a lawsuit against the state filed by the ACLU, Lambda Legal and the National Center of Lesbian Rights after the same state Supreme Court forced San Francisco to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, a move by Gavin Newsom in defiance of state law.

As soon as the court legalized equal marriage, anti-LGBT forces, with major backing from the Mormon and the Roman Catholic Churches and a variety of right-wing politicians, immediately submitted signatures for a ballot measure to overturn same-sex marriage. The battle in the run-up to the November 2008 elections was hard-fought. More than $83 million was raised by Yes on 8 and No on 8 forces, nearly an even split with some $3 million more for marriage equality.

In the end, Prop 8 passed narrowly by 52-48 percent, a disappointment for many on a day that produced the first African American president.

The passage of Prop 8 stirred anger immediately. Starting on Election Night itself and continuing through the week, people in California and across the country took to the streets in protest, producing a new stage in the movement for equal rights for LGBT people and a new generation of activists, known as "Stonewall 2.0." The upsurge in struggle grew in the aftermath and the election, leading to new grassroots organizations coalescing, like Join the Impact, the San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality and One Struggle, One Fight in San Francisco.

On May 26 of last year, tens of thousands protested in California and across the country when the California Supreme Court upheld Prop 8. And in October, more than 200,000 people demonstrated in Washington, D.C., at the National Equality March, demanding full federal equality for LGBT people. Since then, activists with Equality Across America have held regional conferences and continued organizing protests, along with other newly formed organizations.

This resurgence of activism is the important political context that makes the success of Perry v. Schwarzenegger a possibility.

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IN AUGUST 2009, the newly formed American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) filed a federal lawsuit in California on behalf of two same-sex couples who were denied marriage licenses by Alameda and Los Angeles Counties.

The case became Perry v. Schwarzenegger and is being argued by Theodore Olson and David Boies, the attorneys who faced off against each other in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Bush v. Gore case that decided the 2000 presidential race. The state of California declined to challenge the lawsuit, and so the defense was taken up by the organizations that Prop 8 in the first place.

From the beginning, the defenders of Prop 8 fought tooth-and-nail to keep details of the Yes on 8 campaign, as well as their arguments in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, away from the public eye, blocking access to campaign documents and preventing video of the trial from being broadcast on YouTube.

The anti-marriage equality forces have something to hide. Behind their claims that Prop 8 is about protecting children and families is something more sinister: bigotry.

In his testimony at the Perry trial, Dr. William Tam, who supervised the language of Prop 8 , testified that he believes "homosexuality is linked to pedophilia...polygamy and incest." During the run-up to the passage of the measure, Tam wrote that if Prop 8 doesn't pass, "they will lose no time pushing the gay agenda," which according to Tam includes "legalizing sex with children."

Tam himself seeks to push his bigoted views on children. He is executive director of the Traditional Family Coalition, which sponsored an essay contest (with a $3,000 scholarship as top prize) inviting high school students "to suggest ways to reduce social problems," followed by a list that puts "homosexuality" on par with "political corruption," the "AIDS epidemic" and "gang violence."

In the face of such ugly hate, it's hard to deny the point made by Dr. Gregory Herek, a University of California Davis professor and expert on sexual orientation, at the trial: "Structural stigma in the form of laws that discriminate against LGBT people directly encourages social stigma, harassment, and violence."

A victory in the Perry case, even if an appeal is assured, will give supporters of marriage equality more confidence to continue the struggle. But whichever way this case goes, the fight will go on.

Although Brown v. Board of Education outlawed school segregation in 1954, it took 10 years of mass protest to overturn Jim Crow in the South. Finally winning marriage equality will depend on continued pressure from below.

Marxism and Oppression (Audio)

Here is the audio for a talk I gave on "Marxism and Oppression" at the Socialism 2010 conference in Chicago on June 20, 2010.

Western Mass. Rallies for Immigrant Rights

Originally published in The Rainbow Times.

A diverse crowd of over 150 immigrants and their allies gathered on the steps of the Northampton, Mass. City Hall late May to protest the passage of SB 1070 in Arizona, whichaccording to the American Civil Liberties Union “invites the racial profiling of ‘peopleof color.’”

The bill makes it a crime to be an undocumented immigrant in Arizona, requires documented immigrants carry their papers with them at all times, and mandates state and local law enforcement officers to check immigration status based on “reasonable suspicion” a person is undocumented.

Although Brewer said that enforcement of SB 1070 would not result in racial profiling, rally organizer Natalia Tylim said that “this law has meant in practice that Latinos are being forced into the shadows of society for fear of being the targets of police repression.” Seventy-six percent of undocumented immigrants are Latino, according to the Pew Research Center.

Protesters also spoke out against a recent budget amendment passed by the Massachusetts state Senate, which would make it more difficult for undocumented immigrants to access services such as housing, health care, and education, and would set up a hotline for people to report those they suspect of being undocumented to the state Attorney General’s office. Tylim said this will “create a culture of fear” for immigrants in Massachusetts.

The rally, called by the Coalition for Immigrant and Workers’ Rights, was part of a national day of action against SB 1070, the culmination of a wave of protest against the bill, beginning with activists across Arizona and including boycotts by the cities of Boston and Los Angeles among others, including an artists’ boycott spearheaded by Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine.

Protestors came from across Western Mass., including members of the Alliance to Develop Power, the American Friends Service Committee, the International Socialist Organization, the United Auto Workers and Equality Across America.

Organizers are continuing to meet to build a movement for immigrant rights in Arizona as well as here in Massachusetts. On June 7, local activists celebrated a victory when the Amherst Select Board unanimously voted to join the boycott of Arizona, and plans were underway to spread the boycott to Northampton, Springfield, and Holyoke as this article went to press.

“We will [stop SB 1070] with [the politicians], without them, or in spite of them,” said protestor Sister Elvia Mata.

Rallying to make ENDA inclusive

Published at Socialistworker.org.

NORTHAMPTON, Mass.--Over 70 people rallied here on the steps of City Hall on May 3 to demand the passage of a transgender-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would bar employment discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the United States.

Such discrimination against transgender people is legal in 38 states, including Massachusetts, while employment discrimination against lesbian, gay and bisexual people is legal in 29 states.

The rally was called by the Western Massachusetts chapter of Equality Across America (EAA), a grassroots network of LGBT civil rights activists determined to build a movement for full federal equality.

The rally focused on transgender inclusion because although protections for transgender people have been included in the most recent version of the bill, there are reports that the language specific to gender identity has been rewritten, and the updated version has yet to be released.

Organizers stressed the need to reach out to the 89 percent of the population who oppose employment discrimination to pressure Congress to stop stalling and pass ENDA now, and to challenge the right wing's tactic of opposing ENDA by shamelessly scapegoating transgender people.

Bet Power, a long-time transgender rights activist and founder of the East Coast FTM Group, pointed out, "We need to get the language of ENDA so we can be sure we're supporting a trans-inclusive [bill]." Power reminded the crowd of the scandal in 2007, when U.S. Rep. Barney Frank and the Human Rights Campaign broke their promise and supported a version of the bill that dropped protections for trans people.

Several other transgender activists spoke at the rally; many shared stories of times when they've been fired, not hired, or passed up for a promotion because of their gender identity.

"I'm the last one hired, the first one fired...I'm 45 years old, have over seven years of higher education, and I've never been promoted at a job. We deserve financial security," Trystan Dean, a lead organizer for the New England Trans United march and rally, said.

Lorelei McLaughlin, the reigning Miss Trans New England, added, "I'd go into a place with a 'help wanted' sign, give them my resume, and they wouldn't even look at it." McLaughlin shared that earlier in life, as a white man, she had no trouble getting jobs she was underqualified for, but more recently, has had to struggle to find work for which she is overqualified.

Power pointed out that he's "been fired for coming out about who I've slept with and for my gender identity...This is a very hard economic time, and we're suffering extreme poverty because of who we are."

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THE OUTRAGE of several speakers was palpable, as was the sense of urgency and a refusal to wait any longer for equal rights.

McLaughlin said, "we need a trans-inclusive ENDA now to secure basic human dignity."

Jessica St.-Claire, who said she is "proudly married to a transsexual," shouted: "It's the 21st century people, wake up...We're not in the Stone Age anymore! If they expect every American to pay taxes, they should get individual identity rights."

Her spouse, Elle St.-Clair, said, "Every day someone commits suicide, someone loses their job, parents are removed from their children, all on the basis of their gender expression. It's time to stop this."

Autumn Sandeen, a transgender Navy veteran who was arrested last month after she and others from GetEQUAL chained themselves to the White House fence in an act of civil disobedience to call for a repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," sent a solidarity statement from San Diego that was read at the rally:

Now it is not only time to redouble our efforts at lobbying our own Congresspeople into passing a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act, but it is also time for direct action. It is time for public rallies like this one; it is time for nonviolent civil disobedience.

We need to create a tension that tells our Congresspeople that there is an urgency of now in our push for our employment civil rights on a national level. When it comes to employment protections for all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, we must send the message to Congress that we will no longer are willing to wait, nor are we willing to take the tranquilizing drug of incrementalism.

Several participants spoke about the need to fight for full equality and to stand in solidarity with other struggles, especially immigrant rights, in response to the recent attack on immigrants in Arizona, SB 1070.

Chants included "Trans/gay/immigrant/women's rights under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!" and "What do we want? Full equality! When do we want it? Now!"

The need for everyone to stand up for ENDA and equal rights on the job for LGBT people, and to make the connection between that and other struggles against discrimination, was driven home by one of the passersby, who joined the rally. "No one has rights until we all have rights!" they said.

Organizers called on rally participants to join them in Boston on May 22 at a rally at the State House to demand passage of the statewide Transgender Civil Rights bill and full federal equality as part of the national Harvey Milk Week of Action.

Madeline Burrows contributed to this article.

Where we stand with ENDA

Originally published at Socialistworker.org. Also published in Dissident Voice.

AFTER DECADES of waiting for protection for LGBT people from discrimination on the job, a transgender-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is likely to come up for a vote in the House of Representatives in the coming weeks--but still lacks enough votes to pass both houses of Congress.

This is the time for activists to turn up the heat and press Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration to keep their promise and pass ENDA this spring.

The bill has wide support--there are 199 co-sponsors for the legislation in the House of Representatives, including six Republicans. In the Senate, there are 46 co-sponsors.

But passage in the Senate is expected to be difficult. For one thing, the Republican bigots are escalating their rhetoric against what, disgustingly, they call the "bathroom bill," as Sherry Wolf reported at SocialistWorker.org:

What you can do

Find out more about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and how to get involved in the campaign to pressure Congress at the ENDA Now Web site.

Get involved with local events around the Harvey Milk Day week of action as well as the movement for LGBT equality at the Equality Across America Web site.

While polls show that 89 percent of the population support workplace equality for LGBT people, fear-mongering and transphobic stupidities are being spread and echoed by right-wingers. Now that it is less palatable to openly discriminate against lesbians and gays, transgender people have become the primary targets of the cultural cretins...

One widely circulated form letter to congresspeople on Congress.org states, "The thought of my child or grandchild in a bathroom with a transgender (sic) is repugnant to me." Tellingly, this note doesn't even modify the adjective transgender to refer to an actual person--as if "a transgender" is some alien species and not a human being who deserves respect and equal treatment.

But there's a further problem--16 Democrats in the Senate have yet to sign on to ENDA. The Democrats have enough votes to not only pass the bill, but avoid a filibuster if they get all their senators to support it.

The Democrats have no excuse for not passing ENDA now. Our movement needs to call them out publicly on this and demand that they "put up or shut up."

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LGBT ACTIVISTS are getting organized to push the issue of ENDA into the spotlight.

In April, members of the GetEQUAL group disrupted and were escorted out of a House Committee meeting after they called for action on the legislation. At the May 1 demonstrations for immigrant rights, many LGBT grassroots groups organized contingents to march in solidarity with immigrants and their native-born allies and to raise their demand for an all-inclusive ENDA.

Other groups, including Western Mass. Equality Across America, of which I am a member, are planning protests in support of ENDA, as well as organizing for the Harvey Milk Week of Action to demand full federal equality for LGBT people.

Rep. Barney Frank, the openly gay Democratic member of Congress who said that the 200,000-strong National Equality March was a "waste of time at best," called Get EQUAL's ENDA action a "stupid thing to do." He wants activists to stick to formal channels, and call and meet with their representatives, asking them nicely to support the basic civil right to not be fired on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Politicians are aware of this issue and why it matters to us. Those who don't support ENDA or who drag their feet do so because they calculate the political costs of inaction as less than those of action. It's up to us to change the terms of this equation, and that will take more than phone calls and polite visits. We have to act now before ENDA dies again, as it has every time since it was first proposed in the 1990s.

When you lobby a politician, they can tell you anything they want in private, and it's nearly impossible to hold them accountable unless you're a major donor who can use campaign contributions as leverage. Instead of lobbying in private, we need, through protest and direct action, to call out representatives and senators in public and demand they make a public stand on ENDA.

More than small acts of civil disobedience, we need to build a broad movement that includes the active participation of large numbers of people. That's a real possibility on this issue given the hundreds of people who attended recent Equality Across America conferences in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., not to mention the quarter of a million who marched on DC last October.

Barney Frank and other Democrats say they're "working hard," and Obama claims he's a "fierce advocate" for LGBT rights. But they need to tell us what they're doing and why ENDA isn't a top priority for Democrats.

What does it mean that Barack Obama is a "fierce advocate"? He has said numerous times that he supports repeal of "don't ask, don't tell"--in his State of the Union address, he said he'd repeal it this year. Yet behind the scenes, he's been less than committed.

To get a sense of what "fierce advocacy" really looks like, consider what Obama did when it came to getting "antiwar" Democrats in the House to vote for funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in June 2009. The war funding bill passed with only 30 of 256 House Democrats voting against--20 "antiwar" Democrats switched sides and voted to fund the wars.

If they were acting as "fierce advocates" for the LGBT community, Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress would do what it takes, and not prioritize war over equality. It's up to us to force their hand and not let them get away with paying lip service to our cause while they drag their feet and toss us crumbs.

Why can't Constance bring her date?

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

OFFICIALS IN Mississippi's Itawamba County School District are calling Constance McMillen a "distraction."

But the real distraction is the policies of a school district that promote homophobia and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students.

People across the U.S. have been rallying to the 18-year-old's defense since the news emerged that she, with the support of the Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), had filed a lawsuit against the school district--after the district cancelled the high school prom rather than allow Constance, who is a lesbian, to dress in a tuxedo and bring her girlfriend as her date.
In early February, after McMillen spoke with a vice principal about bringing her girlfriend to the prom, a memo was released in the school stating that prom guests "must be of the opposite sex."

In a textbook example of the discrimination that young LGBT people continue to face in many parts of the U.S., according to the Associated Press,

"In the court documents, McMillen said Rick Mitchell, the assistant principal at the school, told her she could not attend the prom with her girlfriend, but they could go with "guys." Superintendent Teresa McNeece told the teen that the girls should attend the prom separately, had to wear dresses, and couldn't slow dance with each other because that could "push people's buttons," according to court documents."

McMillen told the Associated Press that she stood up to the vice principal. "I explained to them that that's really not fair to the people who are gay at this school," she said. On CBS's Early Show, McMillen said she told the vice principal that "you can't pretend like there's not gay people at our school, and if you tell people they can't bring a same-sex date, that is discrimination."

Since district officials cancelled the prom, Constance has gone on the offensive, launching a public campaign for her right, and the right of her classmates, to bring whomever they wish as a date to the prom.

She started a Facebook page titled "Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to Prom!" which gained more than 300,000 "fans" in just five days. In a video posted on her page, McMillen, who has proclaimed in several interviews that she is proud to be a lesbian, thanked her supporters and encouraged them to "stand up for you what you believe in, stand up for who you are."

Although school district officials have not explicitly stated that their decision to cancel the prom is a result of McMillen's case, they released a statement saying they cancelled the prom due to "distractions to the educational process caused by recent events."

Christine Sun, McMillen's attorney, said on the Early Show that this was "clearly the reason they cancelled the prom...The ACLU sent a letter on Constance's behalf, and one week later, the school cancelled the prom."

McMillen's struggle has garnered national attention, including appearances on the CBS Early Show, MSNBC, and the Wanda Sykes Show, and there has been an outpouring of support from around the country.

Matthew Sheffield of the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition (MSSC), a group that works to ensure that LGBT students may attend school free of harassment and discrimination, told USA Today that "his office was flooded by people looking to help" with the Second Chance Prom, which will be held in Itawamba County this year as a safe space for LGBT students and the rest of McMillen's classmates.

According to Sheffield, "We've had a definite spike in people signing on and joining our organization," as McMillen's stand has encouraged others to get involved in the struggle against homophobia in schools.
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CONSTANCE McMILLEN is not the only LGBT student to struggle for the right to attend the prom with a same-sex date, or to wear what they want.

Last fall, then-17-year-old high school junior Cynthia Stewart of Tharptown, Ala., stood up for--and won, with the help of the ACLU--her right to bring her girlfriend to the prom after the Tharptown High School Principal Gary Odom initially told her that she would not be allowed to.

Also last fall, a Wesson, Miss., high school senior, Ceara Sturgis, who is openly gay, was not allowed to appear in her yearbook wearing a tuxedo. The ACLU sent a letter to school officials demanding they allow Sturgis to appear in the yearbook wearing a tuxedo, stating "You can't discriminate against somebody because they're not masculine enough or because they're not feminine enough."

Then there is Will Phillips, a 10-year-old boy from Washington County, Ark., who has refused, despite pressure from a teacher, to recite the Pledge of Allegiance because, as he told CNN, "There really isn't liberty and justice for all...[G]ays and lesbians can't marry...there's still a lot of racism and sexism in the world."

If individuals feel emboldened to take such stands, one big reason is the explosion in struggle as tens of thousands protested against the passage of Proposition 8, which revoked same-sex marriage in California.

Actions like the Itawamba School District's, however, paint a target on the back on LGBT students. So far, McMillen has faced verbal harassment from some fellow students who blame her for the district's decision to cancel the prom. And Phillips told CNN that he has been verbally attacked by students and called a "gay wad" for taking a stand for same-sex marriage.

As commenter Tom Head wrote on About.com, school administrators such as those in Itawamba County are "bullying [LGBT teens] at state expense," when they should be supporting them. Their discrimination encourages homophobia, transphobia and sexism, and gives others a green light to bully LGBT teens and those who do not conform to gender norms.

Such bullying has had deadly consequences. Although there is limited information available, EDGE Boston reports that a 2005 Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education study found that "gay teens had suicide rates nearly double those of their peers," and "were four times more likely to attempt suicide in the past year."

Last fall, according to Tulsa World, a survey of LGBT youth in Tulsa, Okla., found, "Sixty-seven percent of respondents reported having suicidal thoughts or feelings, and 39 percent said they had attempted suicide." Half of respondents reported facing bullying at school, and few reported seeing a school official intervene.

The bullies in the school administration in Itawamba County, meanwhile, are emboldened by the bullies in the Mississippi state government, which provides no protection for LGBT people from employment discrimination and bans same-sex marriage.

Constance McMillen deserves our full support for taking a courageous stand against institutional discrimination. We should honor her advice to stand up for what we believe in--and get involved in the movement for LGBT equality.