Boy banned from North Carolina prom for wearing a kilt
David Leix wore his grandfathers tartan kilt for a "Praise Prom," a Christian alternative prom for homeschoolers. But he was told boys must wear pants.
Dean Peterson, right, and his kilt compadres model prototype postal uniforms at the National Association of Letter Carriers' July convention in Boston, where Peterson introduced a resolution to add kilts to the available uniform choices. The resolution was defeated.
Joni Peterson, AP
Selma, N.C.
A North Carolina teenager says he was kept out of a prom for homeschooled kids because he wore his late grandfather's tartan kilt.
WTVD-TV in Durham reports 16-year-old David Leix wore the kilt for a "Praise Prom," described as a Christian alternative prom for homeschoolers but open to any rising students in grades nine through 12. When he arrived with his date last Friday, volunteers refused to let him in. A dress code listed on the prom's website says pants are acceptable, but jeans, shorts and baggy pants are not.
Hillary Leix, of Johnston County, about 30 miles southeast of Raleigh, said other parents at the prom arranged to buy pants for her son, and he returned after missing two hours.
A phone call seeking comment from prom host Traci Lanphere was not immediately returned on Monday.
In 2008, a US Postal Service employee advocated for making the kilt an official uniform option for mail carriers, USA Today reported.
The idea was defeated in July at a convention of the 220,000-member National Letter Carriers' Association, but Dean Peterson says he is not giving up — and he has his supporters.
Peterson, a resident of Lacey, Washington, spent $1,800 to mail about 1,000 letters and photographs of him wearing a prototype Postal Service kilt — or what he refers to as an 'unbifurcated garment' — to union branches in every U.S. state, Guam and Puerto Rico.
"Unbifurcated Garments are far more comfortable and suitable to male anatomy than trousers or shorts because they don't confine the legs or cramp the male genitals the way that trousers or shorts do," he wrote. "Please open your hearts — and inseams — for an option in mail carrier comfort
In April, Claudetteia Love, a senior at Carroll High School in Monroe, La., was banned from her prom for attempting to wear a tuxedo instead of a dress.
The Christian Science Monitor reports that Ms. Love, whom the News-Star of Monroe describes as a top academic scholar in the school's high-achieving medical magnet program, says that she's gay and that the school's requirement that all female students wear dresses to the April 24 senior is a form of discrimination.
"I told my mom, 'They're using me. They put me in all these honors and advanced placement classes so I can take all of these tests and get good grades and better the school, but when it's time for me to celebrate the fact that I've accomplished what I need to accomplish and I'm about to graduate, they don't want to let me do it, the way I want to,'" she told the News-Star.