A Blast From the Reader Past: Thing 7A

I'm not sure exactly why I picked this NPR story to blog about. It could be that one of my former students is there in Washington marching for gay rights this weekend and has been posting updates to his facebook page with his iPhone (could we even imagine this 20 years ago?). When he was in my class as a senior, he had not come out to his parents yet, and he came to me after school one day, in tears, because he felt like he was living a lie and was tired of it.

Here was an amazing kid. He spoke 4 languages--English, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese--yeah, Portuguese. He was "out" at school, but not at home. He took honors / AP courses. And he was nice. We talked for quite some time that afternoon, and he decided he was going to tell them. I had asked if they were super conservative or close-minded, and he said no. I told him that while it might be a shock to them, they would still love him. I remember talking about how they might be angry, but that anger might stem from fear--fear of him being in a life that can get a person killed simply because, fear of him having a harder time getting through the day simply because, fear of their friends "looking" at them differently, simply because. . .

He told them; they love him; case closed. But what worries me is not the microcosm of our world but the macrocosm. He is marching for the right for gays and lesbians to serve in the military. And while a law can make that happen, a law cannot change the inside of a person's heart. We've had laws concerning racism for quite some time, but our world is still populated with racists. We've had laws about equality for women, but chauvinists still exist. We can write and vote in all kinds of laws while patting ourselves on our collective backs because we are so progressive and so forward thinking, and then go home and feel however we want to about whomever we want to because morality cannot be legislated. And for the most part, none of us will ever kill or seriously injure someone because of our inner feelings.

But we are just ordinary working folk. The president has a tough decision to make, and my former student has a long row to hoe.