Gay Students Force New Look at Homecoming Traditions. Driven by protests from gay students, colleges and high schools are re-examining the ritual of crowning homecoming kings and queens. By By SARAH KERSHAW. [NYT > Education]
Homecoming has so long been an outdated tradition, it's certainly no wonder that it is now being challenged by the gay-rights movement.
In fact, I'm surprised that the annual ritual of holding a campus popularity contest and crowning the winners as "king" and "queen" wasn't killed by the women's movement 30 years ago. (Then again, beauty pageants are still around.) Not to mention, aren't we supposed to be preparing citizens of a democracy?? Didn't we throw off the yoke of royalty, and, let's call it what it really is, social classism, a couple centuries ago?
I want to wrestle with this as a serious issue and try to ask myself how should I as an Educator, and particularly as a social justice-minded Christian Educator, respond to this growing movement to allow homosexual men to run for homecoming queen in drag. But to be honest, I really can't take the whole homecoming thing seriously to begin with. Even though I myself was a runner-up for "Mr. BHS"(We didn't use the king and queen titles at my school--perhaps a reflection of being in a more democratic state on the west coast), I can see now, and really did then, what a bunch of crap it all really is.
So should homecoming traditions be called into question as sexist or heterosexist and changed to better reflect our diverse society? Or rather, should we not recognize that the whole idea of having a popularity contest where the beautiful and athletic reward themselves for being beautiful and athletic and flaunt it in front of all the "inferior" people, is a blatant exercise in classism, elitism, and self-worship? Should we who see it for what it is just laugh it off and take heart in the fact that when the kids grow up they will come to recognize the nonsense of it as well, or should we call for its end as a higly undemocratic institution?
Who knows? I've already spent far more time on it than it's worth. At any rate, I'm back. It's been a busy semester, but I've certainly not lost the blogging itch.
10:11:33 PM 
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