Trans Student Kicked Out Of Constance McMillen's Mississippi School

Dan Savage reports that the same Mississippi high school that canceled Constance McMillen's prom also kicked out a trans student on his first day.

Juin Baize was a student at Itawamba Agricultural—for a grand total of four hours. Baize, his mother, and his two sisters moved to Fulton, Mississippi, from New Harmony, Indiana, to live with Baize's grandmother at the beginning of the year. (For now Baize says he prefers to use male pronouns.) Baize, age sixteen, enrolled at Itwamba Agricultural High School, where Constance McMillen was also a student. McMilllen clearly recalled Baize's first—and only—day at Itawamba Agricultural. "People were talking about him all day, trying to get a look at him," said McMillen. "It was insane, it was ridiculous, it made me so mad. They said he was causing a distraction with what he was wearing but it was a half day of school and people didn’t have time to get used to him." The other students wouldn't be given a chance to get used to him: the next time Baize came to school, according Kristy Bennett, legal director of the ACLU of Mississippi, Baize was given a suspension notice and sent home. When Juin returned to school after his first suspension, he was suspended again.

After a story about the suspensions made the local newspaper, Baize's grandmother ordered the entire family out of her home. And they've now been asked to leave the home of the friends who took them in. Head over to Dan Savage's post for information on how to help. The ACLU will not be pursuing action against the school because the family no longer lives in the district.