Sunday rerun: Tuxedo dysfunction

From the wires of the Associated Press:

LEBANON, Ind. (AP) - A Lebanon High School senior is suing the school after her principal said she couldn't wear a tuxedo to the school's prom.

Court filings say the 17-year-old girl, whose name is not revealed in the lawsuit, is a lesbian and doesn't wear dresses because they represent a sexual identity she rejects.

The lawsuit filed yesterday says that the principal told the girl a special dress code for prom requires female students to wear a formal dress.

The lawsuit filed on the girl's behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana says that the dress code discriminates based on gender and that because the school receives federal funds, the policy violates federal law.

Lebanon Community school district attorney Kent Frandsen says the school will follow the ruling of the court.

You know what’s funny about this? Besides nothing? I was just thinking about Paul Harvey and then I stumbled across this story and all I could think of is how old Paul would have told that tale…some comment about how people just want to change everything, things ought to stay the way they are, what was good enough for Gramps and Grammy oughta be good enough for today, blah blah blah.

You can take that to another level. What if we just kept all the old policies in place? Let’s do a system reset on American History to, let’s say, 1856. People still literally own other people, people are still ill-fed, ill-clothed and ill-housed, women can’t vote, there are no planes or automobiles…wouldn’t want to go back that far?

All righteeo. 1956. You can’t own slaves, but you can keep people out of public accommodations based on their race, and woe betide you if you fall in love in the wrong way. A woman pregnant and unmarried was just about cast out of the village, forced to move out of town while the family claimed she was under treatment for her asthma or something – or, the ill-prepared young couple was hustled up to the Justice of the Peace, prodded along with a Remington 30.06, right into the vows of matrimony at a time when the most appropriate vow for most of them would have been the Boy Scout Oath or something similar. “Jest as long as that child has a last name, by cracky!” And of course, sometimes it didn’t work out, did it? Isn’t that right, Bristol and Levi?

The old “your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins” doctrine is in full effect here. If this young woman chooses to wear a tuxedo or a flour sack or a knight’s chainmail or a letter carrier’s uniform, tell me how that affects you. I just wish that we could learn to let people do what they think is best for them. If they step off a curb, not seeing an oncoming vehicle, yes, by all means, run out there and push them to safety. But if they step off a curb and you don’t happen to like what they’re wearing, keep it to yourself. MYOGDB.

Mr Shakespeare, you wished to say…?

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

   If this be error and upon me proved,

   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

So maybe it would be better to keep our impediments 

to ourselves! Unless you can
provide proof that the wearing of a tuxedo

by an unnamed young woman out in
the heartland will damage our lives here. OK thanks!