-By Warner Todd Huston
It is the time of year for high schools everywhere to begin electing their prom kings and queens. But a high school in Danbury, Connecticut went a different way this year nominating an openly gay male student as both its king and its queen.
17-year-old Nasir Fleming says he grew up being bullied over his sexual orientation but being elected by his fellow students as the school’s prom queen is “sending a message” that bullying is not cool.
The young man says he was not expecting to win but when he did the school erupted in applause.
“I was flabbergasted,” he told the Danbury News Times. “The audience was surprised and extremely supportive. The audience was more excited than I was,” he said.
Fleming was nominated for prom king last year, as well, but did not attend that celebration. This year was different. When he was nominated for both king and queen this year he attended to see exactly what the intention for the nominations were.
He told the media that he wasn’t sure if his nomination for queen was meant to ridicule his sexual orientation. Ultimately, though, he decided that it doesn’t matter. “Either way, I’m still fabulous,” he claimed.
With his selection, Fleming says this is a strike in favor of “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people” as well as a “strong statement against gender-labeling.”
In a Youtube statement, Fleming continued saying, “Even though I identify as male, winning this title is a statement against transphobia,” the statement reads. “As gay people, more or less, are becoming accepted in society, transgendered people are still discriminated against severely.”
“If I can win a title that is outside of my gender, there is no reason why a trans-person should have any problems winning titles in his/her gender (Prom Queen, Miss America, etc). Stop the hate, start the love.”
Fleming says he doesn’t blame kids for taunting him for his sexual preference. “It’s never the kids’ fault. It’s the parents’ fault,” he claimed.
He blamed parents for not pushing past mere “tolerance” and for refusing to teach full “acceptance.”
But the result of this vote has deprived an actual girl of a memory she’d never have forgotten. Isn’t it a bit selfish of this kid to use the prom queen position as a platform for political activism?
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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