Today brings good news for Constance McMillen, the 18-year-old Mississippi lesbian whose high school cancelled prom after she asked to bring her girlfriend. 

The school has agreed to implement a policy banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and it will pay $35,000 in damages to McMillen, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. 

"I'm so glad this is all over. I won't ever get my prom back, but it's worth it if it changes things at my school," said McMillen, who was harassed so badly by students blaming her for the prom cancellation that she had to transfer to another high school to finish her senior year. "I hope this means that in the future students at my school will be treated fairly. I know there are students and teachers who want to start a gay-straight alliance club, and they should be able to do that without being treated like I was by the school." 

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In addition to today's legal judgment against the school, an earlier ruling in the case set an important precedent that will help prevent other students from suffering the kind of discrimination McMillen experienced. In March, the US District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi issued a ruling in McMillen's case that school officials violated McMillen's First Amendment rights when it cancelled the high school prom rather than let McMillen attend with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo.

Read more:

• Calgary queers reclaim their high school prom experience
• Flashback: Gay Ontario teen Marc Hall's prom fight
• ACLU sues US school that cancelled prom over lesbian date
  

Seems a young woman in a tuxedo, arm in arm with her girlfriend at a prom, was too much of a vision of the 2012 kind for some truly inspired Mississippi parents.

Inspired, because they actually dreamed up a particularly vicious plan to derail lesbian student Constance McMillen’s wish to celebrate her graduation with her date and the rest of her cohort.

Wrap this around your conspiracy-theory grey matter, people: they sent her a fake invitation to a fake prom, while staging an actual prom at a “secret location” for Constance’s graduating class — without her.

Constance (pictured below with her dad) and her date ended up with five other students — two with learning difficulties — at the “fake” country club event, McMillen told The Advocate. 

Constance’s reaction?

“They had the time of their lives. That’s the one good thing that’s come out of this, [these kids] didn’t have to worry about people making fun of them [at their prom].”

“The Child is father of the man…” William Wordsworth wrote in "The Rainbow."

And in her approach to what has degenerated into nothing less than a psychological hazing worthy of drunken frat boys, Constance has proven to be worthy of the title, adult.

Constance McMillen is quickly becoming a poster child for gay rights in the United States, as she fights to bring her girlfriend to her Mississippi high school prom. In the past day, more than 80,000 people have joined a Facebook Fan Page in support, and her case has attracted international headlines.  

McMillen was on CBS this morning:

McMillen's story may remind you of Oshawa teen Marc Hall's 2002 fight to bring his boyfriend to his Catholic high school prom. 

From Xtra's archives, on the media storm surrounding Hall's case:  

"When Marc Hall was told that he couldn't bring his boyfriend to his prom, he had no idea that he would set off a media and political firestorm that would turn him into a poster child for gay rights. Politicos are stepping over each other to form a buffer around him that seems to grow bigger by the day."

Hall was able to attend his prom, thanks to a last-minute decision by an Ontario judge: 

"Just hours before the May 10 prom at Monsignor John Pereyma High School in Oshawa, Superior Court of Justice Robert MacKinnon granted Hall an injunction preventing the Durham Catholic District School Board from barring the gay couple from the prom. The board had argued that Hall was setting a bad example for other Catholic students."  

Aaron Ashmore (left) as Marc Hall in the 2004 TV movie, Prom Queen.

And of course, there was the made-for-TV movie, Prom Queen: The Marc Hall Story. Xtra contributor Brent Ledger wrote in 2004: 

"I've said it before and I’ll say it again: Fiction is always better than real life. If any gay news story bored me these past few years, it was the Marc Hall I-want-to-go-to-the-prom story, and if any movie has entertained me, it’s the dramatized version of same." 

Hall dropped the case against his former Catholic high school in 2005.