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News & ArtsWednesday, June 9, 2010
Homo Gay Seniors Crowned Prom King and Queen at High School That Blocked Gay Prom Queen Just Two Years Ago
Posted by Dan Savage on Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 6:47 PM
The Hudson High School prom made history this past Saturday when openly gay best friends were named prom king and queen. Seniors Charlie Ferrusi and Timmy Howard won their respective crown and tiara by a landslide Saturday and said the support they received from their peers and school administration has been fun and humbling.“It’s a really big step for Hudson but also for the gay community in general,” Howard said Wednesday. “To have this happen in our city is pretty exciting.”
Ferrusi said he and Howard started thinking about running about a month ago. While there were some students who were in opposition to their idea many more approved and the boys decided to go for it. By prom night the overwhelming majority of students cast their votes in the open ballot race. They won by such a wide margin the school didn’t crown any runners up.
In 2008 Augie Abatecola ran and won the race for Hudson prom queen but he was denied the crown by school officials. This time around Ferrusi and Howard decided to run their plan by advisors and Principal Steven Spicer beforehand. The school officials said they wouldn’t interfere with the student body’s vote and gave the boys their blessing.
Hudson High School is in Hudson, New York. Congrats to Charlie and Timmy—and to you too, Augie.
3
All right this was kind of a matter of principle at first but it's getting out of hand. It's time for someone to tell the truth:
Prom is a stupid, stupid thing. The less anyone -- especially the kids -- cares about it, the better off they are.
It would be good if no proms discriminated against anyone but it would be best if nobody gave a shit about any prom, no matter how nondiscriminatory they some day become. You can take the hate out of the prom but you can never take the prom out of the prom.
See also: That nice French McDonald's TV ad that is open and affirming to gay kids, in the hopes that they will purchase disgusting McDonald's food which is unfit for consumption by any human, gay or not.
Prom is a stupid, stupid thing. The less anyone -- especially the kids -- cares about it, the better off they are.
It would be good if no proms discriminated against anyone but it would be best if nobody gave a shit about any prom, no matter how nondiscriminatory they some day become. You can take the hate out of the prom but you can never take the prom out of the prom.
See also: That nice French McDonald's TV ad that is open and affirming to gay kids, in the hopes that they will purchase disgusting McDonald's food which is unfit for consumption by any human, gay or not.
5
@4, no! I did too :) And I agree with @3, given that I was an outcast wallflower type in high school -not like the kind romanticized in movies, by the way- and prom was a surreal experience at best, and otherwise disappointing and awkward.
6
prom was the only school function i ever bothered to attend, mostly due to friends' insistence. i ended up in jail.
7
These kids (all of them) are amazing. I am so proud of kids I don't even know (weird)!!
To the prom haters; no one forced you to attend and I'm sorry you had a disappointing time. I never attended one, but both of my daughters did (they were each other's date for two of them!) and had a wonderful time. Don't try to take away someone else's good time just cuz you didn't have fun.
Way to go Hudson!!!
To the prom haters; no one forced you to attend and I'm sorry you had a disappointing time. I never attended one, but both of my daughters did (they were each other's date for two of them!) and had a wonderful time. Don't try to take away someone else's good time just cuz you didn't have fun.
Way to go Hudson!!!
10
Oh God, My poor mother, all during my high school years, having to field calls from other mothers, asking What Sort Of Boy I Was. (I was everyone's ugly sister's prom date.)
But I loved it. I have always loved to dance, and I went to all sort of dances at all sorts of high schools, with darling girls. Plus, a nice dinner before or after (depending on the school) at some pseudo-glam Omaha steakhouse, paid for by dear Papa Vel-DuRay (who was something of a prom whore himself, back in the day).
Kids These Days are doing things with proms I never would have dreamed of, and good for them. Anyone who doesn't love a prom is an old sourpuss.
But I loved it. I have always loved to dance, and I went to all sort of dances at all sorts of high schools, with darling girls. Plus, a nice dinner before or after (depending on the school) at some pseudo-glam Omaha steakhouse, paid for by dear Papa Vel-DuRay (who was something of a prom whore himself, back in the day).
Kids These Days are doing things with proms I never would have dreamed of, and good for them. Anyone who doesn't love a prom is an old sourpuss.
11
Amen, Catalina! I'd have loved to go to the prom with a boyfriend, but times being what they were (70's), I had to settle for girls instead. That I was trying to be straight didn't help, either.
But I always loved to dance, and enjoyed the company of women, so there it was.
Ditto the sourpuss comment, too!
But I always loved to dance, and enjoyed the company of women, so there it was.
Ditto the sourpuss comment, too!
12
So let me get this straight: Hudson High School won't discriminate against gays and lesbians so long as they run their plans by the administration first? I guess that's progress.
13
@12--this is my hometown (I emailed the link to Dan) and yes, having to run it past administrators is progress. Hudson is made up of little niche "neighborhoods". It is pretty ghetto in areas, pretty white trash in others, pretty WASP Young Republicans club in others with a teeny tiny dose of progressive liberals in the rest. We have cops at our basketball games, are in the top 10% of the state for teen pregnancy, and the area as a whole is economically depressed. When I attended (circa late 90s) academically we were consistently ranked 63 out of 65 area schools. My point is that for the two boys in question to feel safe enough to ask the administrators, much less be granted "permission," is a huge step forward. Think of Hudson as the small stupid town Constance McMillen is from--just north of the Mason-Dixon line.
14
I suppose it would be "best" if no one cared about prom. It would be best if high school was a place where academics were the sole focus and growing socially didn't matter. Oh wait, then everyone would get to college and have no fucking clue how to interact with anyone (well, more people anyway).
Trust me, I was not a cool kid by any means, and I skipped my junior prom with no regrets because I was in a play elsewhere. But I went to my senior prom, even though it was lame, because, well, when would I ever go to one again? EVERYTHING doesn't need to be serious, meaningful, deep. A little frivolity IS worth while. Especially to people working so hard to fit in socially. Everyone deserves to feel part of something, even if they realize later that something (high school hierarchies) was major bullshit.
This is a sweet little story. Don't ruin it with your cynicism.
Trust me, I was not a cool kid by any means, and I skipped my junior prom with no regrets because I was in a play elsewhere. But I went to my senior prom, even though it was lame, because, well, when would I ever go to one again? EVERYTHING doesn't need to be serious, meaningful, deep. A little frivolity IS worth while. Especially to people working so hard to fit in socially. Everyone deserves to feel part of something, even if they realize later that something (high school hierarchies) was major bullshit.
This is a sweet little story. Don't ruin it with your cynicism.
16
@ 8 - Um, elaborate? Just saying "You are laboring under a number of false premises" isn't an argument. All your comment says is "You're wrong because you're wrong!"
I'm actually with singing cynic @ 14. There are tons of high school traditions that are just plain silly, and I agree that teenagers place way too much importance on things like prom. That being said, teenagers are (1) a pretty dramatic bunch to begin with, and (2) are sheltered enough within the high school environment that it's easy to see why they obsess over, well, things that are arguable bullshit. I say this as someone who had a disastrous junior prom (thanks to the estrogen-saturated madness that is a lesbian love triangle), and a delightful senior prom.
I'm actually with singing cynic @ 14. There are tons of high school traditions that are just plain silly, and I agree that teenagers place way too much importance on things like prom. That being said, teenagers are (1) a pretty dramatic bunch to begin with, and (2) are sheltered enough within the high school environment that it's easy to see why they obsess over, well, things that are arguable bullshit. I say this as someone who had a disastrous junior prom (thanks to the estrogen-saturated madness that is a lesbian love triangle), and a delightful senior prom.
17
For many Hudson residents and businesspeople, this is both heartening and surprising news.
Hudson is known to many visitors as "gay friendly" due to the large number of local merchants, B&B owners and others who are out.
But local politicians have long worked a homophobic angle in stirring up us vs. them resentments, in both overt and more subtle ways.
For example, I remember a contentious Common Council meeting (about a proposed toxic waste plant) where one of the City's Aldermen made this barely-coded statement:
"All the people who are against the project... They don't have children. They only have PETS." (The word pets was spoken like it was most degrading insult in the world.)
So it's really a great thing to find that the next generation of students from Hudson High don't share these neanderthal views, and were open-minded enough to make this choice.
Hudson is known to many visitors as "gay friendly" due to the large number of local merchants, B&B owners and others who are out.
But local politicians have long worked a homophobic angle in stirring up us vs. them resentments, in both overt and more subtle ways.
For example, I remember a contentious Common Council meeting (about a proposed toxic waste plant) where one of the City's Aldermen made this barely-coded statement:
"All the people who are against the project... They don't have children. They only have PETS." (The word pets was spoken like it was most degrading insult in the world.)
So it's really a great thing to find that the next generation of students from Hudson High don't share these neanderthal views, and were open-minded enough to make this choice.
18
I was very out of the closet in high school (in a pretty liberal and accepting area, so it wasn't that impressive), and my senior year some of the jerks in my class decided it would be funny to write me in to be nominated for homecoming queen instead of king. What they didn't count on was the fact that the administrative assistants who counted the votes loved me from years of being on student council and counted all of their votes as votes for king. I was the only nominee that wasn't on the football team, and because of that, I ended up winning in a landslide. When I was crowned at the dance, a couple of guys in the corner yelled, "Fag!" My best friend yelled back, "Hey, that fag just got voted homecoming king. Doesn't that say something about you?" It's still one of my proudest moments from high school. And I had a total blast that night hanging out with my friends, dancing with the girl who was crowned queen, and reliving that moment over and over.
19
In retrospect, I don't regret not going to prom. At the time, especially junior year, I thought it was the biggest tragedy ever to befall me, though. The prom that year was on my birthday, all of my friends were going, and I wasn't allowed because there was no way in creation my family could afford it (well that, and the fact that I wasn't technically allowed to date yet - my dad was horribly overprotective.). My senior year, I was supposed to go with a guy who was an acquaintence and the friend of a friend's boyfriend. When my friend and her boyfriend broke up about three weeks before prom, that acquaintence decided that we shouldn't go to prom because it would be awkward (which it would have been anyway, because neither one of us had any social skills whatsoever). He told me that on the day I was supposed to go look for a dress.
I don't begrudge anyone looking forward to and enjoying prom though. I just don't understand the people who think you need to go to prom to be a fulfilled human being.
I don't begrudge anyone looking forward to and enjoying prom though. I just don't understand the people who think you need to go to prom to be a fulfilled human being.
21
This is really good news. I went to college in this general area and every year our GLBT organization on campus ran an alternative prom for gay kids and allies who didn't want to/couldn't attend the proms thrown by their school with same-sex dates. This was not that long ago and now I've heard that they don't even throw this alternative prom anymore because none of the schools make a big deal about gay and lesbian students bringing dates in large part because the students at the schools want them at their own prom. This is where progress is happening, each generation is becoming less and less tolerant of institutionalized bigotry and demanding that their friends and loved ones receive equal treatment.
22
@18 that's an incredible story. i wonder what happened to those jocks who called you fag. Which ones came out the closet?
23
Based on the title I thought this story was about some gay senior citizens until I reached the third paragraph.
24
So when are a lesbian couple going to get both crowns? It's always gay guys going for Prom Queen.
25
@22 I'm guessing they all did.
@18 That really was a wonderful story. For me one of the best parts was the fact that you had a friend who was supportive and willing to stand up for you (in addition to being really good with a comeback line). As more things change I hope more teens like you will have supportive, caring friends who, whatever their own sexual orientation may be, are as unafraid of speaking out as you were.
@18 That really was a wonderful story. For me one of the best parts was the fact that you had a friend who was supportive and willing to stand up for you (in addition to being really good with a comeback line). As more things change I hope more teens like you will have supportive, caring friends who, whatever their own sexual orientation may be, are as unafraid of speaking out as you were.
28
@13 - It's my hometown as well, and I agree, it's certainly progress for Hudson. Hudson has been becoming more and more gay-friendly for quite some time now though, I know this year they are having their first Pride Parade. When I was growing up, Hudson was definitely the backwards town you describe, and in some ways it still is, but it's fairly far from that now in many ways. I'm fairly sure Itawamba doesn't have a gay bar, and Hudson does (Red Dot), and with the influx of people from NYC purchasing antique stores and galleries all over town, there has definitely been a big shift in attitudes.
I'm very excited about this though, and while I don't know the two seniors in questions, I do know Augie and I'm super proud of all of them! Congratulations!
I'm very excited about this though, and while I don't know the two seniors in questions, I do know Augie and I'm super proud of all of them! Congratulations!
29
Hudson, NY will also be holding it's first ever Pride Celebration on June 20,2010. Go to http://www.hudsonpride.com/ for more information.
30
Good thing Bishop Joseph Tyson and his anti-Gay cronies were not around! They would have tried to kill all the fun by a lot of pompous holier-than-thou talk. As head of Catholic schools in Seattle Bishop Tyson would not be able to abide the happy looks of health and contentment on these two Prom Kings.
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