Mississippi high schools must really hate lesbians. I’m sorry, I know that sounds harsh, but this is beyond unacceptable. If you thought Constance McMillen’s heinous treatment was the first, it was not. Of course it was not. It was just the first we heard this year of how Mississippi treats homosexual high school students who decide to live their lives honestly.
Ceara Sturgis, an out lesbian high school senior was cut out from her high school’s yearbook. Not her photo. Her. No photo, not even her name. Nothing. It’s as if she didn’t exist. The school just decided, since she was a lesbian, and out, and yes, wore a tuxedo instead of a dress (where have we heard that one before?) in her yearbook photo, that they had the right to simply exclude her from the yearbook, which was released to students last Friday.
Via the Jackson Free Press:
“They didn’t even put her name in it,” Sturgis’ mother Veronica Rodriguez said. “I was so furious when she told me about it. Ceara started crying and I told her to suck it up. Is that not pathetic for them to do that? Yet again, they have crapped on her and made her feel alienated.”
Rodriguez said she expected the yearbook to at least contain a reference to her daughter on the senior page. What she discovered on Friday, when the yearbook came in, was that the school had refused to acknowledge her entirely.
“It’s like she’s nobody there, even though she’s gone to school there for 12 years,” Rodriguez said. “They mentioned none of her accolades, even though she’s one of the smartest students there with wonderful grades. They’ve got kids in the book that have been busted for drugs. There’s even a picture of one of the seniors who dropped out of school.
“I don’t get it. Ceara is a top student. Why would they do this to her?”
Why, indeed.
“We have had our legal counsel research the validity of the position of the School District on this matter,” Copiah County Superintendent Ricky Clopton said in the statement. “We are informed by counsel that this exact issue has been litigated in federal court. The decisions of the federal courts completely support the policy of the district in this regard. It is the desire of the Copiah County School District to inform, first, the patrons of the district, and second, all other interested parties, that its position is not arbitrary, capricious or unlawful, but is based upon sound educational policy and legal precedent.”
Sound educational policy?
Horsefeathers.
“She basically grew up here, but she feels so isolated. And it’s not the students. The students love and accept her,” Rodriguez said. “The kids even nominated her for prom queen, but she ducked out, knowing the officials would never let her be prom queen.”
Turns out, the Mississippi ACLU has been pretty busy. They defended Ceara last year, and she made headlines. In fact, there’s a Facebook page in her honor, listing articles like, “Velvetpark’s Official Top 25 Most Significant Queer Women of 2009,” which listed Ceara first (“we love and honor them all equally”) as “The Tigerbeat Teen Heartthrob – Ceara Sturgis, Gay Activist.”
Wow. Pretty impressive.
Then, there’s this entry on the Ceara Sturgis Facebook page:
“Largest Mississippi newspaper, Clarion Ledger, acknowledges Ceara’s story as one of the most important of the year. Trust us, this is a big deal for Mississippians to acknowledge that LGBTQ youth exist!”
Ceara even made The New York Times last year. In, “Can a Boy Wear a Skirt to School?,” the Times, looking at the issue from different sides, wrote,
At Wesson Attendance Center, a Mississippi public school, just that sort of fight erupted over senior portraits. Last summer, during her photo session, Ceara Sturgis, 17, dutifully tried on the traditional black drape, the open-necked robe that reveals the collarbone, a hint of bare shoulder.
“It was terrible!†said Ms. Sturgis, an honors student, band president and soccer goalie, who has been openly gay since 10th grade. “If you put a boy in a drape, that’s me! I have big shoulders and ooh, it didn’t look like me! I said, ‘I can’t do this!’ So my mom said, ‘Try on the tux.’ And that looked normal.â€
Shortly thereafter, students were informed that girls had to wear drapes for yearbook portraits; boys, tuxedos.
For the record, Ceara Sturgis, you do exist. It is those with tiny little minds and tiny, bigoted hearts who will fade into history, and on the wrong side of it.