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MONDAY, MAY 23 , 2022. WASHINGTONPOST.COM/STYLE EZ RE C
Don’t you forget about me
RIYA CHOKSI/WASHINGTON POST ILLUSTRATION
BY SYDNEY PAGE
Shira Berkowitz loved being a
counselor at an overnight summer
camp in Minnesota. In 2007, Berkow-
itz, then 22, was primed to become t he
program director for ninth-graders,
but then a message arrived: Please
don’t come back to camp.
Staff a t the camp, which B erkowitz
requested not be named, “would say
inappropriate things about my sexu-
ality, and question whether it was
right that I would be in the same
cabin of same-sex kids,” s aid Berkow-
itz, who identifies as queer.
Parents also voiced concern about
Berkowitz’s gender identity and
SEE CAMP ON C3At an inclusive
summer camp,
kids get to be
their true selves
buffalo — When
a gunman opened
fire at a Buffalo
supermarket this
month, I tried to
help The
Washington Post
find a local
freelance
journalist to start covering the
story while editors scrambled to
get our own reporters to the
terrible scene. As a Western New
York native who worked at the
Buffalo News for decades, I was
pretty well positioned to be a
scout.
I texted one former colleague
who told me he would check to
see if he could take an outside
assignment. The response came
back quickly:
“Denise said no.”
Buffalo News deputy managing
editor Denise Jewell Gee made
the right call, of course. This was
an all-hands-on-deck moment for
the paper, which has acquitted
itself well. It has broken news
about the massacre while
providing a stream of vivid
reporting and heartfelt
commentary. T he News even
delivered thousands of free
papers to the city’s East Side
where 10 Black people were killed
and three other people were
injured in what’s been aptly
described as a racially motivated
domestic terrorist attack.
Watching this astonishing
coverage over the past week, I
SEE SULLIVAN ON C2
A reckoning
on racism
that’s been
overlooked
Margaret
Sullivan
What Biden
should
say about
abortion
Joe Biden is not
the person I
would have
chosen to be
leading the nation
when Roe v. Wade
was overturned.
Until earlier this
month, he
reportedly had never publicly
uttered the word “abortion”
while serving as president. When
he finally did, in response to the
leaked Supreme Court draft
opinion that would overturn Roe
v. Wade, I wished he hadn’t: He
awkwardly alluded to the
Supreme Court taking away the
freedom of women to “choose to
abort a child.”
As we hurtle toward the
official release of the Supreme
Court’s decision, he’s going to
have to figure out how to
effectively say something. Biden
may not be able to pull off the
same speech Kamala Harris or
Elizabeth Warren might muster
under such circumstances, but
there are words this president
can use to meet this moment
while staying authentically
within himself.
Here’s an idea of how he could
start:
“Nobody ever dreams of
having an abortion. Not the 16-
year-old who was raped by her
uncle, not the mother of five who
can’t afford a sixth, not the
college student who missed a few
birth control pills, or the victim
SEE HESSE ON C2
Monica
Hesse
LIZ OSOWIECKI/WASHINGTON POST ILLUSTRATION
TOP: Prachi Misra, pictured in the purple dress, at queer prom with friends in April at the University of South
Florida in Tampa. BOTTOM: L iz Osowiecki, left, with her friends at queer prom in June 2021 in New York City.‘SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE’
McKinnon, Davidson and
others depart the show. C5
BOOK WORLD
An octopus tells a story
you won’t want to miss. C2
CAROLYN HAX
Couple does the math on
having another child. C8
ning a silvery blue tuxedo vest and
shirt, Dengler attended her first
queer prom in Tampa with a group
of friends.
“It was phenomenal,” she said.
“Everyone was just so comfortable
there. We danced the entire time.”
Ahead of the event, she even
made promposal videos and posted
them online. “I wanted to experi-
ence it in a way,” she said, “and I felt
like this was that way for me.”
The vision behind the queer
prom Dengler attended was to offer
people a second chance at the night
they’ve always wanted, said Holly
Winebarger, the founder and direc-
tor of programming for QFX, which
hosted the event. It w as a lso intend-
ed as a safe space for the LGBTQ
community in Florida, “which is
under the attack of anti-queer legis-
lation,” she added.
SEE PROM ON C3BY JANAY KINGSBERRY
Meghan Dengler is a self-
proclaimed die-hard romantic. It’s
how the 31-year-old explains her
fascination with “promposals” —
the high school ritual of inviting a
date to prom often through elabo-
rate and public gestures.
But she never had that experi-
ence. In fact, her prom in 2009
looked a lot different than how
she had imagined it — largely
because the all-girls Catholic
school she attended wouldn’t al-
low students to bring same-sex
dates or arrive solo.
“I just wanted to enjoy the night
with my friends and not have to
force myself to go with a date that I
wasn’t comfortable with,” said Den-
gler, who identifies as queer.
On May 14, she finally got the
chance to do prom her way. Don-