GLSEN prom draws variety of couples

As she mingled with her friends in a ballroom in the Pittsburgh Hilton, Amanda wore three lip… As she mingled with her friends in a ballroom in the Pittsburgh Hilton, Amanda wore three lip rings, a red mohawk and short, pink dress that revealed her numerous tattoos, including a gorgeously drawn, completely nude Medusa.

It was not typical prom attire, but this was not a typical prom.

Last week, Pittsburgh’s chapter of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network held its first “Safe Prom for All,” which attracted a colorful crowd.

The guests included punk rockers, drag queens, drag kings and the type of fashion-savvy gay men who have recently made a splash on network television.

But there were also many clean-cut young adults who would seem typical at any other prom, had they had people of the opposite gender on their arms.

Two hundred people attended the event, including gay, lesbian and transgender teens, supportive peers and adult organizers. All dressed their best, according to their individual fashion senses.

Amanda, who is a 21-year-old GLSEN board member, described herself as loud, both in dress and temperament.

“Even before I came out, everyone assumed I was a lesbian,” she said good-naturedly.

Other punk-ish girls sported shaved heads and multicolored hair, but most of the young women wore less flashy get-ups.

Many of the female couples consisted of one young woman in an evening gown, and another in attire more common to men. One such paring included a petite, young woman with short, blond hair, wearing a tie, a blazer and slacks. Her date was a tall, feminine beauty with curly, red locks.

When asked about their choices in attire, both women seemed to find the question odd.

“I’m not really a dress person,” the shorter of the two said. “I’ve always been a tomboy.”

“I always wear dresses,” the other said flatly.

And then there were the drag queens.

One such diva, wearing a long, purple evening gown, asked a tuxedoed friend to see if the men’s room was empty before she entered.

“I don’t want to scare any of these peoples,” she said.

Her friend motioned that the room was clear and the purple-clad queen walked forward, holding up her dress to ensure that it did not touch the men’s room floor.

Throughout the night, hotel employees wearing plain clothes and poker faces stood around, while the adult-aged organizers quietly smiled, perhaps vicariously living out the high school proms they never had.

“Miss Buddy,” a drag queen in pearl earrings, a pink beehive wig, and a bright pink dress cut low enough to betray a few rogue chest hairs, bemoaned that she wore a suit and tie to her 1983 senior prom.

Race, Gender and Area Affect Experiences in High School

Robin, an attractive, doe-eyed 18-year-old, recently came out as a lesbian to her peers and soon after helped to found Franklin Regional High School’s gay-straight alliance. She said administrators are tolerant of her and her gay peers, but her other fellow students are not as understanding.

“My school was very accepting,” she said. “But a lot of the students there were very turned off by it.”

Robin and her girlfriend, Laura, who attends Plum Borough High School, went to Franklin’s prom, where they received some glances.

“One group just stared at us, but we just stared back at them,” Robin said.

She said that gay men in her school are picked on more often than she is.

“As a female, I did not have to put up with much of that, but the guys in the club do,” she said “It’s a lot different for gay guys in school.”

Levi Hunn, a clean-cut 18-year-old who attends Somerset Area Senior High School in Central Pennsylvania, would likely agree.

“I hear the ‘fag’ comments walking down the hall every day,” he said. “I just let them roll down my back, though. I’m sick of putting up with it.”

Hunn said that school administrators have tried to stonewall efforts to change the attitudes toward gay students in his school.

When students attempted to start a GSA, Hunn said, Principal Mark Gross told him that no new clubs could be formed because the school did not have the means to hire advisers without a teacher’s contract — a reason Hunn considered bogus.

Gross recalls these events differently.

He said he spoke with students about the formation of a GSA, and that the matter does not concern teachers’ contracts. Rather, Gross said, the organization has not been founded because none of the students put in a formal request to the school board.

“We need to know the bylaws of a club before it gets started,” he said. “We need to know how many students will be in it, how they will try to affect Somerset [and] how advisors will fit in.”

Gross said that Somerset High does not create a negative environment for gay people. He doubts that the school board would reject a GSA, if it were applied for properly, and he said that the administration is not antagonistic towards gay students.

“I try to support every kid,” Gross said, adding that he believes Somerset students are likewise supportive.

“They are pretty good kids,” he said. “The students are very supportive of each other, and I’m not aware of any [harassment] issues.”

Hunn, who graduates this month, plans to assist younger students in forming a GSA. Despite Gross’ assertion that only proper paperwork is needed, Hunn feels that intervention from the American Civil Liberties Union may be needed.

Hunn blames the sociopolitical climate of rural Pennsylvania for part of his troubles.

“With the exception of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is about as conservative as Texas,” he said.

But even in Pittsburgh, some gay students say they have encountered problems.

Angie Noel, a soft-spoken 19-year-old, said that her experiences in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Penn Hills demonstrated a severe lack of open-mindedness.

“It’s a very racist, homophobic area,” said Noel, who is gay and black. “If you don’t fit the mold, they don’t like you and they try to make you as miserable as possible.”

Noel, who graduated from Penn Hills Senior High in 2003, came out of the closet during her sophomore year, at the same time as her girlfriend, who was a year younger.

“I got in trouble for holding my girlfriend’s hand in the hallway,” Noel said. “They said we had offended a security guard.”

The next blow came when girls in the cosmetology program in which Noel had been involved accused her of ogling at them, and soon after threatened to attack her, Noel said.

To change the environment, Noel, who also struggled to convince her parents to accept her sexual orientation, tried to start a GSA at Penn Hills.

“They said we didn’t need one, that the environment is OK,” Noel recalled. “I said, ‘I have people threatening to kill me. The environment is not OK.'”

When Noel attempted to start a GSA, administrators trapped her in a seemingly endless series of Catch-22s, she said

She said that she talked to the principal, superintendents and guidance counselors, each of whom bounced her to another administrator.

Penn Hills administrators did not return three calls from The Pitt News.

During Noel’s time at Penn Hills, two of her classmates came out of the closet, both of whom were white, apolitical and athletes on school sports teams, Noel said.

“No one gave them any problems at all,” she added.

Despite what Noel described as double standards, harassment and difficulties posed by the administration, she remained unapologetic about her sexual orientation and went to her senior prom on the Gateway Clipper with anther woman — a brawny, 22-year-old woman.

“[The chaperones] asked, ‘She isn’t going to throw anyone overboard, is she?'” Noel said, smiling.

Noel, who now attends the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute, recalled the prom as one of the brighter moments of her high school years, but she said she generally tries not to remember that time of her life.

“It’s an experience I would never want to go through again,” she said.

“A Very Diverse Crowd”

The students, organizers and college-aged allies at the GLSEN prom briefly paused their socializing at 8 p.m. to listen to a reception speech from Eloise Delong, a transsexual lawyer and GLSEN board member.

On a stage lit dimly by rainbow-colored lights, Delong gave a brief history of the gay and lesbian movement, starting with the 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn, where a crowd of gay and lesbian people resisted arrest by the New York vice squad, and ending with the recent allowance of same-sex marriages in Massachusetts.

At the mention of the latter, the adult organizers cheered, and eventually the students looked up from their dinner plates and joined in.

Delong then recalled an incident in which she demanded that a McDonald’s employee and the her manager apologize, after the employee derogatively referred to something as “gay.”

“I doubt [the employee] or her manager really meant their apologies, but we gave them something they’ll be thinking about for a long time,” she said.

Delong then made way for DJ Doug.

“If you have a request, come up and tell me, but please respect other people’s requests,” Doug said. “It looks like we have a very diverse crowd.”

“But don’t tap my shoulder if you see me mixing!” he added, earning a more boisterous response than any part of Delong’s speech.

Doug then spun Marcia Griffiths’ dance hit, “Electric Boogie,” and minutes later, 50 to 60 young people joined in the Electric Slide.

The battles for tolerance, acceptance and equality would be fought another day. For the rest of the night, they were just kids out to have a good time.