KarMel Scholarship 2005
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“Coming Out Speech to
Teachers’” By
Alexander Thorne |
Desciption of Submission: “Last spring, 7 members of the GSA at my
high school spoke at a faculty meeting. We talked about what high school is like from
our perspectives.” - Alexander
Well, this has got
to be one of the stranger experiences of my high school career: coming out to
all of my teachers at once….But I do so because I would like you to know what
this school is like from my perspective.
First of all, I would like to thank you for fostering such a positive
environment for all students. I really
mean that. I am totally out to
everyone—I even have a pin that says, “Gay by nature, fabulous by choice” on my
backpack, and yet I have never been attacked or even personally denigrated for
being gay. I have talked to gay students
at other schools who are astonished when I tell them this. West High is much farther along on the path
to complete tolerance than most schools.
Yet there is still work to be done.
Last year during the Day of Silence I was sitting in the commons during
lunch at a table distributing information about why we weren’t speaking, and
several students were sitting on another bench making lewd and inappropriate
comments about gay people. At the end of
lunch one of them walked over and poured juice all over the table. And there isn’t a day that goes by that I
don’t hear the phrase, “That’s so gay” in the halls, or hear some student call
another a “fag” to disparage them. It
makes my day when I hear someone call them on it. It makes me feel like I have an ally. If any of you are wondering, “what can I do
to make this school safe and supportive of everyone?” I would ask you, if you
ever hear hateful remarks, simply to point out to students that their remarks
are inappropriate. And in class
discussions relating to gay issues, try to represent all points of view. I know plenty of students who are not
confident enough to come out who would feel much less pressure to lie if they
knew that they had people on their side, or at least people who could accept
them for who they are. I remember that
my greatest fear in coming out was that people would reject me. When I saw that most people were ok with gay
people, I felt empowered to be honest.
Whatever your view on homosexuality, you, as I believe all human beings
do, have an obligation to at least try to be accepting of other people and
other points of view. In that manner we
can make this school a better place for all students, be they gay, straight,
white, black, male, or female. Thank you.
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