Now-rescinded Missouri prom ban on same sex couples actually wasn't intended to target gays

Alvin McFerren

NBC's Elizabeth Chuck and Vignesh Ramachandran have discovered that Scott County Central High School policy against same sex couples, rescinded after he threatened legal action, wasn't an antigay policy after all, though it had that effect.
     The school's handbook said "students will be permitted to invite one guest, girls invite boys and boys invite girls."
     A school administrator told Dawson the school board wouldn't consider revising the policy, so the Southern Poverty Law Center sent a letter to the school and its district threatening legal action
     That got the district's attention, as is usually the case. A day later it said it was removing the handbook stipulation and explained why the rule was never meant to be gay-exclusive:

     "I found out why the stipulation in the student handbook was originally put in there, and it's rather innocent, to be honest," Alvin McFerren, Scott County Central School District superintendent, said. "This was during a time 10-15 years ago that the previous administration was having issues with some of the students trying to come in on either the single rate or the couple rate. They implemented that to make sure they couldn't circumvent the rates that students were supposed to pay as they entered into our dances."
     McFerren said Dawson will be allowed to go to prom with his boyfriend.
     "It was never intended to be a discriminatory thing," he said. "We want an educational environment for all of our kids and we're not ever going to discriminate as to whether or not the board has the policy and we don't do that based on sexual orientation. Period."
     McFerren said he felt the community, which has just over 360 students in the entire district, would take the change well.
     "We are a family," McFerren said. "We're such a small school that I don't feel as if there will be any negative reactions whatsoever. It was never intended to be a policy that would create any controversy in the first place."

(Via Towleroad)