‘You have to have joy’. LGBTQ+ Tacoma youth find community at Queer Prom
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- About 300 LGBTQ+ youth and young adults attended Tacoma’s annual Queer Prom.
- Organizers held the celestial “InterGaylactic Ball” at Pacific Lutheran University.
- Event offered queer history, ballroom culture, resources and a quiet room.
Under strobing lights of red, purple, blue and green, about 300 teens and young adults took to the dance floor on a recent Saturday night as part of the annual Queer Prom put on by Tacoma’s LGBTQ+ youth center.
The noise of anti-LGBTQ+ politics, homophobia and transphobia was drowned out by serenades of Lady Gaga and Green Day as local queer youth ages 14 to 24 carved an American coming-of-age tradition on their own terms.
The News Tribune set out to document queer joy April 18 in what organizers described as the biggest queer prom in Washington. This year’s theme was a celestial “InterGaylactic Ball” held at Pacific Lutheran University. Youth had a chance to learn about ballroom culture and queer history, make friendship bracelets with the PLU Astronomy Club, pose for pictures, get connected to supportive resources and relax in a designated quiet room.
“With the rise of anti-LGBTQ, specifically anti-trans policies in schools, sometimes schools will not be the safest place for people to be openly queer at prom,” said Oasis Youth Center drop-in specialist Luca Holmes, who organized the event with the help of volunteers and the youth council. “You see all the youth and all their amazing outfits, and a lot of times they’re like, ‘I feel like I couldn’t wear this when I went to school.’ This is a place where they genuinely feel like they will be seen and heard and get to be themselves with their friends or with a partner that maybe their school didn’t allow.”
Holmes, who is 24, said he realized he was trans in middle school and never got to go to prom because he graduated from high school during the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizing this year’s event and seeing all the youth have fun marked a full-circle moment, he said.
‘Everybody deserves happiness’
Elena Angeles, 18, serves on the Oasis Youth Council and helped plan the event since October. While she fixed her makeup and donned silver starred press-on nails in the bathroom that Saturday night, the Tacoma resident said, “It’s such a privilege to have a community that has your back.”
A queer person of color, Angeles said there are few spaces where she feels truly understood and accepted. Angeles said it’s important for queer people to have “cliche high school” milestones like prom.
“Among all this stuff that’s going on in the world, it might seem silly like, ‘Why do you want to focus your time on some stupid dance?’ Joy is so important to a revolution. Even throughout war and a lot of hate and such, you have to have joy. That’s actually what makes a revolution stronger, is being able to have those moments of community and connection,” Angeles said. “[Without] hope in sight, you don’t have an end goal. You can’t just keep saying, ‘Well, there’s the light at the end of the tunnel.’ But what does that … light look like? Everybody deserves to feel good, everybody deserves happiness.”
Some attendees wore floor-length gowns, decorated with pearls and jewelry. Others wore suits, crisp button-ups or jeans. One Puyallup ninth grader was dressed as the David Tennant variant of “Doctor Who” (a nod to the space theme) with a red bow tie, TARDIS jacket, red Converse, 3D glasses and sonic screwdriver. Many The News Tribune spoke to said it was important to not isolate themselves, despite feeling scared and sad.
Lei’Lene Ortega, a 16-year-old from University Place who wore a celestial crown of stars, said the current state of the country “is making us more divided than we’ve ever been.”
“I feel as though this event being here, and my appearance tonight makes more of a difference, that there is a place that people can go to even when the [country] is kind of in shambles,” Ortega said. “I’m excited to meet new people here, make new friends and celebrate.”
Her friend Miya S., a 10th grader from University Place, said it was their first time attending a dance. They said, “Just being around the overwhelming aura of queerness and homosexuality, it just gives me joy.”
UP 10th grader Evelynn Galler went to Queer Prom last year and had been looking forward to this event for a while. With purple curly hair, a cream sparkly dress and combat boots, Galler danced the night away with her friends.
“It’s a really open space, you just really feel accepted by everyone,” she said. “I feel like everything is just so sucky right now, and it’s just good to be yourself.”
