Submitted by Marjory on Mon, 2010-07-12 13:48

Filed under:

• Social Change in Oregon
• LGBTQ
• Youth

High school prom is considered a rite of passage for teenagers in this country, but for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth it’s often a reminder of their “outsider” status.

This weekend my co-worker held a prom to celebrate her 40th birthday. It had a classy “Underwater Odyssey” theme—complete with faux seaweed, 80’s music and a lit archway people posed under for photos.

It was the first prom for many folks in the room. People gave a lot of reasons for not going to prom when they were young: they didn't date in high school, or their school didn't have a prom, or the prom was for "other" students. For a lot of kids—back in the 80’s as well as today—prom just wasn’t a welcoming environment because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Those students' experiences became national news this spring when Mississippi high school student Constance McMillen challenged her school’s ban on same-sex prom dates. A federal judge agreed with her, so the High School responded by canceling the event, and communities began debating whether queer youth should be allowed at prom. Last month Constance was back in the news when she was invited to be grand marshal of the annual gay pride march in New York City.

Dating in high school is nerve-wracking enough. Imagine if your love life were being discussed across the country?

My senior year I went to the prom with my friend Janet. She wasn’t my girlfriend, she was my friend-friend. (As far as I know, Janet was and still is, a straight woman.) There were jokes, but no one thought it was personal to us.  We were just two girls who didn’t have dates who went to the prom together, and I was relieved to stay in the safety of their assumption.

Today there’s more support for queer students. There are groups like MRG-grantee Lotus Rising, a youth-led social justice organization in Southern Oregon whose mission is to create a visible, inclusive, safe community for queer youth. There are the thousands of adults who have signed petitions in support of Constance McMillen. Heck--there are even online resources on how to take a same-sex date to the prom.

Kids still have to have the confidence to go out and find those resources, though. That's a big barrier to overcome if your community is telling you the thoughts and feelings you have aren't acceptable. Unfortunately, prom is just one of many rituals can be used to declare who is inside and who is outside the “norm.”

That’s the funny thing about rituals. They can bind a community together, but all too often, they are used to set limits on how much of ourselves we can show.

What we need are communities that have the confidence to love their own. The creativity to make rituals that embrace a range of human experience. And the security to say to their children--without waivering--that in the face of oppression, love will keep us together.

Coming next week: Love Will Keep Us Together Part 2 -- new developments in the campaign for marriage equality. 

Photo: My senior prom