Source: Huntsville Times
SCOTTSBORO, Ala. - They just wanted to go to their school prom, but for one couple at Scottsboro High in Alabama, it took more than the usual dressmakers and hairstylists to get ready. For Chelsea Overstreet and Lauren Martin, lawyers and a judge had to intervene before the school would allow the gay couple to attend the school's annual big dance.

On Saturday afternoon, the girls were pretty much like a lot of others in town -- both nervous and excited about going to their first prom in a only a few hours.

But unlike the others, they went to the dance as a gay couple, something the Scottsboro City Board of Education tried unsuccessfully to stop.

And unlike most of the couples who would be attending the dance later in the evening, they had just returned from a press conference.

"It's something they had been planning for a year," Martin's mother, Connie Farrington, said during a press conference Saturday afternoon with their lawyer, Parker Edmiston, at his Scottsboro office. "Just like every other child, she was ecstatic" about going.

During the press conference, Edmiston, Farrington and Overstreet's mother, Sarah Collins, answered reporters' questions as the girls stayed in another room. Edmiston said the girls would not be talking to reporters, although photos and videos of them were permitted after the press conference. Overstreet, 17, a junior, wore her prom dress while Martin, 16, a sophomore, had on a tuxedo.

The mothers explained that the the day before spring break two weeks ago their girls were told by school officials that they could not go as a gay couple.

"This is just a dance," Edmiston said. "Adults need not get involved."

A last-minute court order at 10:15 am from Jackson County Circuit Judge John Graham of Stevenson prohibited the board from banning the girls from the junior-senior prom at Scottsboro's Goosepond Civic Center Saturday night.

Because there is no state law specific to the issue, Graham cited a federal court ruling that prohibits public schools from barring same-sex couples from proms.

Graham cited two federal court rulings. In one, the U.S. Supreme Court said "states and their agencies ... cannot set-out homosexuals for special treatment..." The other "prohibits publicly-funded schools ... from barring same-sex couples from school functions."

"It was a letdown" when they were told they couldn't go to the prom as a couple, said Martin's mother, Connnie Farrington of Scottsboro. She said her daughter had just bought a suit when a teacher told her about two weeks ago that she could not go to the prom unless she was with a boy.

But now she's ecstatic," she said on Saturday, after hearing about the judge's ruling.

Full article: Gay couple attends Scottsboro High's prom | Huntsville Times
Court orders Scottsboro High to let gay couple attend prom | Huntsville Times