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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyMay 30th, 2016
Aaron Fricke and Paul Guilbert
The year before, Paul Guilbert, a junior at Cumberland (Rhode Island) High School tried to attend the junior prom with another guy. He ran into opposition from both the principal and his father. Guilbert didn’t go to the prom. Instead, he spent what remained of that school enduring taunts, spitting, and one student slapping him. The principal and assistant principal had to escort Guilbert as he went from one class for to the next until school ended for the summer.
A year later, Aaron Fricke came out to friends at school, and he and Guilbert started dating. In April, Fricke decided to ask Guilbert to the prom. Things would be different this time. “For myself,” Fricke later wrote, “it would mean participating in an important social event and doing so with a clear conscience and a sense of wholeness. … We would be just one more happy couple. Our happiness together would be something kids would relate to. I would be showing that my dignity and value as a human being was not affected by my sexual preference.” Also, they knew that with both of them being eighteen years old — both of them were now legally adults — they knew that if the school stood in their way, they could go to court.
The school did stand in their way. Principal Richard B. Lynch refused to allow the couple to attend, complaining that the publicity “upset other students, sent the community abuzz, and rallied out-of-state newspapers to consider the matter newsworthy.” It also got Fricke five stitches under his eye when he was attacked in the hallway between classes. That only gave the Principal another reason to deny the request: he couldn’t guarantee the couple’s safety.
Aaron Fricke (top) and Paul Guilbert
This wasn’t the first time that a gay couple tried to go to the prom. The year before, Randy Rohl, 17, and Grady Quinn, 20, attended a high school prom in conservative Sioux Falls, South Dakota with the full support of that school’s principal and several fellow students ( May 22). But in Rhode Island, Fricke first had to file a lawsuit in Federal court (with the help of the ACLU), charging that the school district was infringing on his First Amendment right to free speech. “I feel I have the right to attend,” he told the judge. “I feel I want to go to the prom for the same reason any other student would want to go.” The judge agreed (PDF: 60KB/7 pages), and ordered the school district to allow the couple to attend,.
Two days later, Aaron Fricke, wearing an electric blue tux, and Guilbert in traditional black, arrived to find the venue surrounded by TV cameras, flash bulbs, and reporters shouting questions. Once inside, principal Lynch ushered the couple to an empty table, where they ate their dinner, with the other students, and yet also very alone. After dinner was over, a few other students started to approach the table to offer their encouragement. The dance began. A girl that Fricke new in elementary school asked him to fast to a fast number, and he obliged. But other than that, Fricke and Guilbert held back for several more song. Then it was time for a slow song: Bob Seger’s “We Got The Night.” Guilbert asked Frike to dance. They walked onto the dance floor. As he later wrote:
The crowd receded. As I laid my head on Paul’s shoulder, I saw a few students start to stare at us. I closed my eyes and listened to the music, my thoughts wandering over the events of the evening. When the song ended, I opened my eyes. A large crowd of students had formed a ring around us. Probably most of them had never seen two happy men embracing in a slow dance. For a moment I was uncomfortable. Then I heard the sound that I knew so well as a B-52s fan. One of my favorite songs was coming up: “Rock Lobster.”
Paul and I began dancing free-style. Everyone else was still staring at us, but by the end of the first stanza, several couples had also begun dancing. The song had a contagious enthusiasm to it, and with each bar, more dancers came onto the floor.
The prom ended on a high note, but Fricke’s troubles didn’t end. He was accompanied to his graduation commencement by several uniformed policemen, for his own protection. Fricke went on to become a gay rights advocate, with a particular emphasis on school safety and anti-gay bullying. Meanwhile, the case of Fricke v. Lynch became an important legal precedent for other gay couples across the nation since then.
Fricke later wrote about his experiences in Reflections of a Rock Lobster: A Story about Growing Up Gay. He also collaborated with his father on another book about coming out, Sudden Strangers: The Story of a Gay Son and His Father.
[Source. Aaron Fricke. “One Life, One Prom.” In Michael Denneny, Charles Ortleb, and Thomas Steele (eds.) The Christopher Street Reader (New York: Coward-McCann, 1983): 21-27.]
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Eric Payne
May 30th, 2016
Ah, prom.
At mine, in May of 1977, I knew with whom I wanted to attend. There was another boy, a year younger than myself, who had recently transferred from my school to one some 30 miles distant. He and I had connected with each other a couple of times, and I thought (I told myself) he might want to come because all his friends were still in this school.
He turned me down, sadly. I then asked a female classmate to attend and, yes, with the drinking and the pot and the after-party, we had quick, completely unsatisfying sex.
Just a few years ago, I started using Facebook to reach out to those few people I remembered, fondly.
One of them was that boy… he presently lives in London, England, with his husband. They own an art gallery, in which he frequently exhibits his works.
The girl still lives in the area of our old high school. She was the one who gave me the boy’s FB account name, and she shared a story with me: A year after our prom date, she was his prom date. She laughed and asked if there was something about going out with her that turned a guy gay. :-)
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