Making a prom date changes his fate

By Mark Davis

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

COCHRAN — Derrick Martin had a question he couldn’t answer, so he did what any 18-year-old would. Fingers tapping, he logged on to his computer last December and Googled the following words, which changed his life:

“I’m gay. Can I go to the prom?”

He can, and will. But those eight little words have done more than ensure the high school senior can take a same-sex date to Bleckley High School’s prom next month.

Seeking that answer has thrust him to the forefront of a national discussion. It’s touched off heated discussions in beauty salons and restaurants here and elsewhere, and made this small middle Georgia town a focal point in the debate over gay rights. Some applaud him for bravery. Others say his soul’s in peril.

All he really wanted, he says, was a night to remember.

“I didn’t anticipate this,” Derrick said earlier this week, a few days after news got out that he would bring his boyfriend, a young man from Tift County, to his prom. “I thought this might run on the second page of the paper.”

Instead, he’s Derrick Martin, sudden celebrity. As he sat on a bench underneath a bare oak tree outside a Bleckley school building, a Ford pickup, kids hanging out of its cab, zipped by. Derrick! Derrick! young voices belled.

A Honda sped past. It sprouted arms from every window. Hey, Derrick!

Derrick sighed. “If I could have just brought him without asking, I would have done that.”

‘You better sit down’

Derrick Martin is young enough that his facial hair is still spotty; like the rest of him, it’s not done growing. His 160 pounds are stretched across a frame nudging 6-foot-3. He is as long and narrow as a church pew, and only slightly more comfortable discussing all that’s happened since his Google query.

As he searched Web sites, Derrick came across the legal defense site for the national gay-rights organization Lambda. A representative of the group told him that if a school system didn’t have rules forbidding same-sex dates, then Derrick likely could bring his boyfriend.

“They did warn me that the school system could cancel the prom,” he said.

That wasn’t just conjecture. School officials in Itawamba County, Miss., canceled a prom recently after 18-year-old Constance McMillen said she wanted to bring a girl to her school’s April 2 dance. The American Civil Liberties Union, claiming the school board violated her right to free expression, has demanded that McMillen be allowed to attend.

Nothing like that occurred in January, when Derrick requested a meeting with Bleckley High Principal Michelle Masters. Because his date isn’t a Bleckley student, school rules required Derrick to fill out a form identifying him. He decided to check with Masters first.

“You better sit down,” he began.

Masters took the request to the Bleckley County Board of Education. When the board next met, it also discussed another Martin — Derrick’s father, Ray, a math teacher at the high school. Board members named him Bleckley’s teacher of the year.

Then they turned to his son. In early March, the board announced that Derrick could bring his boyfriend to the prom. School Superintendent Charlotte Pipkin, who declined comment, earlier this week released a two-paragraph statement.

The board decision, the statement said in part, “is not an endorsement of any particular practice or life style, but rather recognition of the legal environment in which public schools operate today.”

Bleckley High School, home of the Royals, would hold its prom April 17, as originally planned. The junior class would plan it, as well as decorate the school gym. This is a BHS tradition.

But tradition, people soon learned, was about to get a test.

A town debates

Cochran, about two hours south of Atlanta, is a confluence of U.S. and state roads that come together for a few blocks before fanning out again across rolling land that yields peanuts and cotton. A museum near the police department is dedicated to those agricultural staples.

About 5,200 people live here. Wednesdays at noon, much of downtown adheres to a practice that has just about gone the way of the mule. Stores close. People head to the municipal golf course, visit Macon to shop, or catch up on the latest events.

A lot of catching up these days focuses on Derrick’s decision, and how it reflects change — not just in Cochran, either.

Barbara Anderson’s shears snipped quickly, as if they were as indignant as she.

“I think they [the school board] ought to do like that other state and cancel the prom,” said Anderson, who owns a styling salon here. “They won’t allow us to have God in school, but they’ll allow this?”

Across the street, waitress Victoria Cagle took a break after the lunch rush. She is a 2009 Bleckley grad who hopes to attend nearby Middle Georgia College and teach high school biology.

“I think what they [the board] did was the right thing,” said Cagle, 19. “I think what he’s doing is awesome.”

Merchant Jason Ledbetter isn’t so sure.

“It bothers me,” said Ledbetter, 47, part-owner of a downtown music store. “By him doing that, it shows we accept it.”

Business partner Kenny Laney wasn’t as ruffled as Ledbetter. “It’s like an inter-racial couple,” said Laney, 54. “I thought we would have gotten over that by now, and gotten over this, too.”

The boys may face a divine reckoning, said resident Faye Ortiz. “What they do is up to them,” said Ortiz, 45, who recently moved back to central Georgia from Texas. “They’ve got to answer to God.”

Dealing with fallout

Opinions aside, Derrick’s action has come at a cost. He’s no longer living at home. Staying there, he said, became intolerable as news spread that he was taking his boyfriend to the prom. For now he’s staying with a friend, the girl he escorted to last year’s prom.

“She’s my best friend,” he said.

He also has friends who are gay, Derrick said. He expected some of them to stand with him when he took his request to school officials.

“I thought I would have had a little bit of backup,” he said, disappointment creeping in his voice. “But it’s just me.”

His boyfriend, who’s also 18 and a school senior, has not made any public comments. Derrick’s parents are remaining silent, too.

So Derrick talks. He talks about school. Kids there have known he is gay for a while. Most of them, he thinks, are on his side.

He talks about work. He is an after-school tutor for elementary and middle school kids at risk of not passing state tests.

He talks about the future. He’s planning to attend Georgia Southern University, which he said has given him a scholarship in recognition of his 92.5 average. He wants to go to law school, maybe someday become the state or U.S. attorney general. “That would just be so awesome.”

He also thinks about what has happened these past few months.

“I only wanted to be honest,” he said. Now, he feels an obligation. If he has to be the face of gay rights, OK.

A big lesson to learn from eight little words.