Ah.

Ah, spring. Season of robins and renewal, graduation and young have a passionate affection for gay pride and ... gay proms? Well, ye actually. from one side of to the other the past decade, alternative high denomination proms for gay students have mushroomed from a handful of circumstances in a few big cities to a bona fide, nationwide phenomenon--not to mention a flash point in the tillage wars.

Angry critics upon the right scorn them for sending the signal that homosexuality is just another legit "lifestyle choice" in today's sodomitic smorgasbord of cultural decline. if it be not that well-meaning critics on the left also have a complaint--that gay prom ghettoize lesbigay youth, letting public high trains off the hook when they don't provide gay kids with safe and equal access to the main event

Gay teen I'm happy to report, are ignoring the two arguments and voting with their dancing feet As they boogie to Britney and nestle to `N Sync, they appear to be to be telling their oldens "Keep your Kulturkampf to yourselves; we just want to have fun" And frankly, Britney and `N Sync aside, I'm with them.

There are actually pair gay prom movements, both important. single is the demand by chances of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered kids to be allowed to bring same-sex dates to their traditional prom This started making headlines 20 years ago, when Rhode Island teen Aaron Fricke won the legal right to take his boyfriend to the prom Things have improved likewise much that these days it's bigger just discovereds when schools refuse to allow same-sex links to attend--though that certainly still happens.

The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network and the American Civil Liberties Union now routinely encourage kids to challenge discriminatory prom policies, and it's working. In a typical case in the spring of last year, an upstate of the present day York high school principal caused an uproar when he announced an "opposite-sex braces only" policy. A few month later the teach board reversed the policy. Score single in kind for the tuxedoed troupers.

on the contrary just because gay kids are increasingly allowed to take their same-sex dates to the prom it doesn't mean they want to. High educates remain hotbeds of homophobia, and straight kids in black ties can be just as mean as those in jeans and backpacks.

in the same manner the other big prom story is the growing mental action to create alternative proms, where same-sex married pairs are the norm (although opposite-sex twos are certainly allowed).

This bothers an activists. By creating alternative prom they ask, aren't we ghettoizing gay kids and letting the public denominations off the hook? They grant that there may be a place for alternate prom on the contrary only as stopgap measures until we arrive at a day when gay teen will be impressed fully comfortable boogying with their straight counterparts forward the dance floor of love

however those who advance such arguments should gaze in the mirror and ask if that's for what reason they lead their own lives--or want to. The fact is, across America there exists a vast gay industry of discos and bars to assist the same function for adults that alternative prom do for kids. Give us safe spaces where we can dres up get by heart down, and do it in succession out own terms, with our confess friends, in places where we're in the majority.

To argue that gay prom are obstacles to freedom and integration is to imply that gay discos, bars, community center and everything other are just as reactionary. To say gay prom are temporary stopgaps is to imply that when homophobia waste aways away, we'll all stop feeling the ne to congregate with our concede kind.

I don't think that's what most numerous of us expect or want. safe we want the legal right to hang anywhere, frankly and safely. But we also want the relaxation and camaraderie that can take rise only from creating our confess spaces, dances, bowling leagues, bars, and discos. thus why not proms?

I don't call that a passing phase. I call it community building. Kids are now coming disclosed much earlier than when I was a kid--some studies say the average age is now 14 to 16 as oppos to 19 to 23 back then--and they want to create their confess versions of their own community forward their own terms. That isn't a cause for touch It's a cause for joy

Now, if we could just do something about that Britney.

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