At a Bucks County queer prom, no royalty, wear what you feel best in, and ‘everybody belongs’

For Carson Delany, the hour-long train ride flies by when there’s the Rainbow Room on the other side.

Over the last three years, the junior at Cheltenham High School has made the trek to Doylestown almost weekly to visit the Bucks County center for LGBTQ+ youth providing educational resources, programming, and, on Saturday, a queer prom.

For weeks, Delany, 17, and a committee of eight other students from Bucks and Montgomery Counties had planned, stuffed swag bags, and decorated for the “Cosmic Colors” prom at the historic Moravian Pottery & Tileworks building. The decor: space-themed with a side of disco balls. The rules: flower crowns but no gendered prom royalty, wear what you feel best in, and, Delany said, “Everybody belongs.”

“It’s just full of such loving and welcoming energy,” said Delany, who began attending Rainbow Room meetings in 2019 when first coming out to others as nonbinary and using they/them pronouns.

On Saturday, Delany planned to wear an all-black suit, eyeliner, and silver jewelry to the dance under the pink-lit glow of the adjoining Fonthill Castle. “Even if you’re straight and an ally, you belong, you will have a good time,” they said. “It just feels like everything prom should be.”

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In high schools nationwide, prom is often recognized as a rite of passage. But from the election of prom kings and queens, to expectations for which students wear dresses or suits, or opposition to bringing a same-gender date, “Many queer kids do not feel welcome or included in that rite of passage in their own schools,” said Marlene Pray, the founder and director of Planned Parenthood Keystone’s Rainbow Room.

Saturday’s dance, which coincided with the 20th anniversary of the Rainbow Room, was the center’s second queer prom event. Around 200 teen students and alumni from 80 schools across the region planned to attend the free dance, as well as more than 40 adult volunteer chaperones.

Among the chaperones: Debra Camarota, 63, a Doylestown Pride organizer who said she knows firsthand how important feeling like yourself at a prom can be.

As a 16-year-old attending Lincoln High School in Northeast Philadelphia in 1976, Camarota said her love interest was another girl, but bringing her to her prom “wasn’t even a discussion,” nor was what Camarota wore: a yellow chiffon dress with full hair and makeup.

Looking back at the pictures nearly 50 years later, Camarota — who said she “identifies more on the masculine side of the world” — sees a teenager who “was completely out of control in my life.”

“There was no light in my eyes,” she said. “I was detached and shamed.”

Now, Camarota, who works by day as a haberdasher, volunteers to help students tailor suits and put together donated prom outfits “so no one has to look back and say, ‘That wasn’t me.’”

On Saturday, she planned to attend the queer prom in a custom-made Ralph Lauren tuxedo, purple bowtie, and a swipe of lipstick — this time, her choice.

In recent years, Pray said she has seen a “deeply concerning” local rise in negative rhetoric toward LGBTQ+ youth that she believes is “rooted in lies, misinformation, and fear.”

Last week, the ACLU filed a federal complaint against the Central Bucks School District on behalf of seven trans and nonbinary students and their families, alleging the district has created a “hostile environment” for LGBTQ+ students through unchecked bullying and school board policies. In the Pennridge School District, also in Bucks County, the ACLU and Education Law Center have said they are “closely monitoring” what comes next after the district this month instructed teachers to remove all pride flags and religious and geopolitical symbols from classrooms as part of a new school board policy against teacher advocacy.

» READ MORE: ACLU has filed a federal complaint alleging Central Bucks has created a ‘hostile environment’ for LGBTQ students

Last month, a Pennsylvania lawmaker introduced legislation to ban conversations around sexual orientation and gender identity in commonwealth classrooms. When a similar bill was passed in Florida earlier this year, online anti-LGBTQ hate surged 400%, a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate and the Human Rights Campaign found.

A space like the Rainbow Room, Pray said, has become a refuge for some kids, but its programs “are not simply to escape … the world,” but about “celebration and meaning, empowerment and joy about the beauty and worth of LGBTQ+ young people.”

Studies show that spaces perceived to be affirming can save the lives of young LGBTQ people, who are at a higher risk of bullying and self-harm.

Paul Foster graduated from Pennridge High School in 2005, and went to his school prom with one of his best female friends.

One of the only out gay people in his grade at the time, he said he faced bullying and opposition from peers and administrators to starting a Gay-Straight Alliance. Discovering community and a group of LGBTQ friends within the Rainbow Room, Foster said, in many ways “saved my life.”

New policy changes and reports of bullying in some Bucks County schools, Foster, 36, said, have left him feeling dismayed. “Society as a whole has gone leaps and bounds. ... But it just feels like we’re fighting the same fight all over again. And it’s a shame.”

Foster, who now lives in Newtown Square, said he was most looking forward to the scene he remembered from chaperoning the 2020 queer prom: the joy of the students.

“I just never had seen young people being that happy and proud and enjoying themselves,” Foster said. “It really brought so much warmth to my heart to see that. Imagine what my life could have been like if we had had something like that when I was young?

“It was truly magical, and it completely reaffirmed my faith in humanity.”