Making small strides

Having grown up in a small town in Idaho, I can really appreciated this story. When I was a senior in high school, I was secretly dating another boy my age. We did everything together from studying, riding our bikes, hiking, and even having him over to my house for a "sleep-over". He did the same for me. At my home, I had a "full" bed that was big enough for two. My folks never questioned anything because they thought he was just my friend. At his house, he had a twin bed, but would always ask me to sleep with him. It was kind of sweet.

What sucked was that we loved each other, but couldn't show it to anyone. It would have been dangerous. In my senior year, somehow, word got out that I was gay and that someone else was gay that I was seeing. I think maybe his sister said something by mistake, I'm not sure. I went through bad times with teasing, being beaten up, shot (another story I told earlier on this blog), but... I never told anyone who he was, and I never would have.

We had the senior prom and I wanted so much to take him. But, we probably would have ended up dead somehow. He wouldn't have gone and because of the harassment that I was going through, he didn't want to be seen with me anymore. So, I didn't go to the prom. I missed so much in my senior year. It was more of a course in self preservation.

That's why this story of two girls wanting to go to the prom together struck home with me. Things have changed I suppose, even in Wyoming. Perhaps it's because that is the state that Matthew Shepard was killed. Perhaps awareness is a bit higher there than it was in Emmett, Idaho when I was a senior. At any rate, these girls have a lot of courage to stand up for their rights. I commend them. (story)

Student fights same-sex dance rule

Associated Press
BIG PINEY, Wyo. - A straight Big Piney High School student is challenging a school district policy barring lesbian and gay students from bringing same-sex dates to school dances.

At the request of school officials, sheriff's deputies met Amanda Blair at the school's homecoming dance in September to block her from attending the dance with her date, another young woman.

Blair, a senior, has enlisted help from the Wyoming chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project in seeking to overturn the policy in this remote town of about 400 people in western Wyoming.

"I couldn't believe that our school was so threatened by the idea of two girls going to homecoming together that they had police officers waiting for us," Blair said. "It's really sad that this is the kind of attitude that lesbian and gay students at my school will face when they want to bring a date to a school dance."