Evereyone remembers their prom (or sometimes proms, if you go two years in a row). Even if you don’t actually go to it, you remember the time period surrounding it, and the stories of your friends who went. For a lot of bisexual, lesbian, gay and transgender (BLGT) kids, it can be fun, but also bittersweet and confusing. If you get to go with your friends or with a friend, boyfriend or girlfriend as your date, then everything should be fine. But if you are queer in some way, especially if you are not out, then you are either hiding a secret, or possibly feeling that something is missing. I wasn’t out when I went to my two proms. And though I was with someone I was happy with and with a group of friends, proms were some of the rare times I actually thought about my “secret” (bisexuality) and wondered how my proms would have been different if all of the BLGT kids had been allowed to be themselves. I enjoyed going with a boyfriend, but part of me felt like I should have had a second prom and seen what it was like to go with a girl and be in a queer environment. I later learned that there were several kids who were not straight in some way and had wondered the same thing. But no one talked about it too openly; the idea of a “gay prom” was more of a joke than anything else. I remember thinking, why did there have to be a “straight prom” and a “gay prom”? Couldn’t we just have one big prom, and everyone be themselves?

Unfortunately it seems that fifteen years later it’s still hard for BLGT kids and straight kids to have a prom together. While there has been some progress on this front, we as a society have a long way to go. The unfortunate case of Constance McMillen showed this. Last year Constance wanted to take her girlfriend to her prom, and it caused a huge uproar as the school would not allow it. The comments her classmates were writing on facebook were frightening; I had thought homo and biphobia was bad when I was her age, but this was the worst I’d ever seen. I wondered whether kids like Constance would ever get to have a “normal prom”.

It was around then that I heard about Washington DC’s Capital Queer Prom. It had been going on in my area for about five years. It was an event thrown around prom time every year by several BLGT organizations, where the queer community could bring whoever they wanted to prom and be out. Anyone could come; BLGT adults could finally experience prom the way they had wanted it to be, or as in my case, that second prom they’d always wondered about. This content is for members only.