Clearly, we still have a looong way to go fighting for LGBTQIA acceptance.
From Boulder's Daily Camera:
http://www.dailycamera.com/...
A St. Vrain Valley charter school's leadership is under fire from gay rights activists and others for blocking a class valedictorian from giving a graduation speech in which he planned to out himself as gay.
Evan Young, an 18-year-old graduating senior at Longmont's Twin Peaks Charter Academy High School, with a 4.5 GPA and a scholarship awaiting him at Rutgers University, also was not recognized as valedictorian at his school's May 16 graduation.
Young said he had agreed to several advance edits to his speech by school Principal BJ Buchmann. But he resisted when Buchmann told him to also take out his disclosure of being gay.
As a result of refusing to remove his disclosure of his sexuality from his speech, his speech was cancelled.
But there's more...
Again from the article:
According to Young and his family, prior to the graduation ceremony, the principal called the student's father, Don Young — who has previously served on the charter school's board of directors — and outed the teen to his parents.
"Mr. Buchmann called me and said, 'I've got Evan's speech here. There's two things in it that I don't think are appropriate,'" Don Young, an accountant, recalled. "One was he had mentioned another student's name. And then there was his coming out that he was gay."
That was the first time in Evan Young's life that his parents had been given a clue about his sexual identity.
"My parents are very liberal. I think they were totally OK with it," Evan Young. "But I was not OK with it.
Evan was fortunate in that he has a very supportive family. But his graduation was ruined by this bigoted piece of shit of a principal, as was his plans to come out to family and friends on his terms.
And think what would have happened if Evan Young's family wasn't supportive. How many gay students got outed by Principal Buchmann who didn't have such supportive parents? Did any of those kids get thrown out of their homes onto the streets? Or disowned? Or refused tuition help when going to college? Or sent off to "reparative therapy" for some psychological abuse? Did Buchmann think of that?
This asshat of a principal needs to be fired. Immediately.
