Garrison Gibbons, the only openly gay actor in the University of Mississippi’s production of The Laramie Project, was shocked. “To be ridiculed like that was something that really made me realize that some people at Ole Miss and in Mississippi still can’t accept me for who I am,” said Gibbons.
The incident started when 20 Ole Miss football players were forced to attend a theatre production this week as a part of their freshman-level theater course. As the play began, the football players started yelling out “hate speech” at the actors, calling Gibbons and others “fags” while talking loudly on cell phones, snapping pictures, and laughing.
Photo from TheDMonline via UWire
Other members of the audience allegedly joined in. According to the play’s director Rory Ledbetter “The football players were certainly not the only audience members that were being offensive last night, but they were definitely the ones who seemed to initiate others in the audience to say things, too. It seemed like they didn’t know that they were representing the university when they were doing these things.”
Gibbons and others have gotten a lot of support since the incident, and the story has apparently gotten so much traffic that the UM newspaper website that originally posted it is actually having trouble keeping their servers up.
#OleMiss students, football players disrupt play with “hate speech” – The Daily Mississippian http://t.co/si3b9cLq7N via @thedm_news
— Kendall Downing (@reporterkendall) October 3, 2013
I want to thank everyone for their kind words and thoughts, this is why we are doing this and I love all of you.
— Garrison Gibbons (@thegibber) October 3, 2013
While the football players were forced to make an apology, Theatre Department Chair Rene Pulliam was “not sure the players truly understood what they were apologizing for.”
Rachel Staton, a cast member, said that the players and other audience members were the worst she’s ever seen. “I have been acting for seven or eight years, and a lot of that has been in front of young children…That was by far the worst audience I’ve ever performed in front of…If I can go support and respect the football team in their stadium, I feel like they should be able to support and respect me and my fellow cast members when we are doing a show.”
This bigoted display in Mississippi is certainly regrettable, but far from the only such example in the state. Earlier this week, Rueters reported that a rural town in Mississippi denied a lesbian woman’s attempt to get a bar license because of her sexual orientation.
“The unfortunate part of all of this is that I don’t think that the audience members that caused these problems really understood what they were doing,” Ledbetter said. “Further education on all of this needs to be brought to light.”