Lesbians, Tuxedos, Prom, Oh My!

Constance McMillen, wait for it, a lesbian (are you still sitting?), has caused quite the stir at her local high school in Fulton, Miss. Every blog and main stream news outlet, even folks on twitter have much to say about it! What’s the big deal? Well first of all, she’s a lesbian (did the earth just stop?) and secondly when the school told her she couldn’t bring her girlfriend to the prom, she went to the American Civil Liberties Union arguing discrimination. And when they cancelled the prom, she claimed retaliation from the school board.

Janet Shan, a blogger from The Hinterland Gazette, had much to say about the “Drama in Mississippi.”

“Aren’t there more important things the state of Mississippi should be focusing on?” said Shan, “The young lady should be allowed to take her significant other to the prom.”

The school district’s policy requires that senior prom dates be of the opposite sex, so decided to cancel the event “due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events.” The ACLU gave the school district until Wednesday to change that policy, stating their policy banning same-sex prom dates violated McMillen’s constitutional rights. What did Shan have to say about that?

“So, I am guessing, if two kissing cousins want to come to prom as a couple, that would be okay by the ACLU, right?” stated Shan, “Personally I would not vote in favor of gay marriage, but I do realize that people have no choice over who they love and I respect that…”

I may not agree with her views on gay marriage, as I am personally against stating it should only be a union between a man and a woman, but regardless, I do agree with this, “Mississippi is very slow to change…” said Shan, and “I give this young lady credit for being brave and true to herself.”

1..2..3..10...2,369,102.... It's 2010, let the count begin.

According the Census Bureau, the participation rates have been declining since 1970. The reason? If you ask the left, it’s the undercounted Hispanics, African Americans and the homeless, but on the right, it’s the conservatives who willingly do not participate. Regardless, the marketing since the last census in 2000 has had a substantial increase with the census budgeting $133 million in ad campaigns that began this January. According to Juan Williams’ editorial, the controversy is why and who are they really trying to market?

Juan Williams, news analyst for NPR, political analyst for Fox News and author of Marketing the 2010 census with a conservative-friendly face, strongly believes that the census bureau has put most of their “friendly faces” in the conservative political basket. According to Williams’ editorial, if you’re a conservative male who watches NASCAR, you probably saw the census’ name on Greg Biffle’s Ford Fusion, car No. 16. Marie Osmond is on board for the female conservatives in Las Vegas and for those who watch the QVC home shopping network. Williams also notes that even football fans weren’t left out; this year’s Super Bowl had a census advertisement and heard specific mentions during the broadcast.

The reason for the “friendly faces” towards the conservatives according to Williams’, critics say the census is an invasion of personal privacy and will result in more liberal Democrats in Congress, not to mention conspiracy theories and the counting of illegal immigrants meaning “more illegal immigrants counted equal more power- for ethnic lobbyists, Big Labor, and the Democratic Party,” according to conservative columnist Michelle Malkin. Basically according to Williams’, the conservatives are urged to not participate in the count because it's only for political gain on the left.

Williams’ also states that the census is already responding to complaints on the right with unprecedented ads aimed at political conservatives- in his opinion “a subset of the group with the biggest over-count: white Americans.”

Though Steven Jost, associate director for communications at the Census Bureau ensures, “we closely monitor development in news and politics. We take seriously our responsibility to count everyone. So we are going to take every step to assure every American that we want them counted.”

Williams concludes that the census’ “biggest problem isn’t the political tensions caused by the rising number of minorities in this nation; it is that the government has to make a special effort to let upper-income, older suburbanites know that it dearly values them and wants to make sure they, too, are counted.”

Not that I do agree 100% with Williams’ argument regarding the push for the conservative’s participation, he does have strong points and it does make you take a moment and consider. However after additional reading of other editorials regarding the census, I feel pretty confident the Census Bureau is doing their part to increase their advertising towards the declining count of Hispanics and African Americans, and doing their part in trying to reduce the costs of the census counting process, ie more mailing your count, television, newspaper and radio ads in efforts to reduce door to door census takers.