Lesbian couples persuade Texas high school to get rid of homecoming kings and queens

High school homecoming tradition will get a facelift at one Texas high school, regardless of whether Cecilia McBride and her girlfriend, Story Dornsife, are crowned by their class.

Both were nominated for homecoming court by their classmates at Stephen F. Austin High School last week, but two school officials told McBride that, in keeping with homecoming court traditions, both she and her girlfriend would have to run for homecoming queen, to be paired on the court with the boy whom the class names homecoming king, according to the Austin American Statesman.

So they went to the school principal and the same day struck a deal to change that tradition, the newspaper reported.

“They said, ‘ we don’t do two queens, we don’t do two kings, it has to be a king and a queen,” McBride told KXAN. “Because a king has to be male and a queen has to be female, it’s impossible for a gay couple to win. I basically told them right away, this isn’t okay. I was almost in tears — I was furious.”

With another lesbian couple also nominated by their peers, Austin High Principal Amy Taylor decided to let her students lead, and helped them change the makeup of the homecoming court to more accurately represent the students who were nominated, the station reported.

Now, four seniors at Austin High will be elected as “Homecoming royalty,” rather than being named kings, queens, princes or princesses, according to Spectrum News. Two students from the other three grades will also be elected to the explicitly gender neutral homecoming court positions.

The winners will still be announced at the homecoming football game, the night before the big dance. McBride, who plays piccolo and the marimba in the school band, and Dornsife, who is in the color guard, will find out whether they’re “Homecoming royalty” on Thursday, Oct. 11, when the Austin High Maroons play against Hays.

McBride told Spectrum News she wishes that the school kept the idea of the royal couple intact.

“I feel like they are taking away our right to be represented as a same-sex couple,” McBride told Spectrum. “I’ll just work with what I have and make things better for the future.”

But not everyone agrees that the changes at Austin High make things better for the future.

Texas Values, a conservative Christian organization based in Austin, said in a written statement to KXAN, “It’s sad that a long-held tradition of simply honoring a girl and a boy for homecoming has been dethroned for the sake of political correctness.”

A spokesperson for Austin Independent School District told the Statesman that the changes to homecoming court are not being mandated for all high schools in the district — that each school will be left to decide the makeup of its homecoming court.