Transgender homecoming queen Steven Sanchez is a first for the University of Northern Iowa. The 21-year-old captured the crown on Friday, thanks to fellow students.
The Des Moines Register reports that Sanchez was born a male but identifies as “both male and female.”
Sanchez is reportedly a parent to one child, and claims to have been bullied “relentlessly” growing up. He said finding out that he’d become the first transgender homecoming queen for UNI left him “speechless.”
The Register stated that “a standing room-only crowd had packed into a campus auditorium and erupted in applause when his name was read.”
“I never would have thought years ago that I’d be standing on a stage, people cheering for me because they voted me homecoming queen,” Sanchez said. “It was unbelievable.”
While Sanchez’s victory was a first for him and the school, it was not the first scored by transgender persons this year.
In September, The Inquisitr brought you the story of Cassidy Lynn Campbell, another transgender homecoming queen, who captured the high school crown in Huntington Beach, California.
Campbell was born male but said that she always felt like a girl. She started taking hormone blockers and has been sharing her transition from male to female with more than 18,000 viewers on YouTube.
Cassidy told the LA Times that she decided to run for homecoming queen because she wanted to feel accepted. The 16-year-old said that she never truly felt comfortable and believed that if she won homecoming queen it would prove that her peers accepted her for who she was.
Both of these cases indicate a clear acceptance of LGBT persons among younger generations, but the UNI win for Steven Sanchez is particularly eye-opening as Iowa is often considered a “swing state” during election years due to high numbers of both conservative and liberal voters.
It reflects the continuing shift in public opinion towards accepting alternative lifestyles as part of the norm.
What do you think of UNI and the high school in Huntington Beach voting for a transgender homecoming queen?
