The student senate of the University of North Texas last week rejected a bylaw amendment that would have allowed same-sex couples to run for king and queen of homecoming.

Student government regulations at UNT do not bar LGBT students from running for homecoming king and queen, but they do provide that the court be elected as a male-female couple. The proposed bylaw amendment would have eliminated that restriction.

The bill, which had been introduced a week earlier, generated a strong negative response from UNT parents and alumni.

Debate on the proposal lasted for an hour, and at times grew heated. The final vote was five in favor of the change, ten opposed, and eight abstentions.

One student who voted against the bill said that he had been swayed by threats from alumni to end charitable donations to UNT, and from parents of students who had gone so far as to threaten to force their children to withdraw from the university.

Student government interns conducted an informal poll of two hundred students before the vote, and the UNT student newspaper, the NT Daily, said the results were “generally negative.” Comments on the Daily‘s coverage of the vote have, however, been mostly supportive of the defeated amendment.

(Thanks to @ericstoller on Twitter for the heads-up on this story.)