Evan Young, an 18-year-old graduating senior at Twin Peaks Charter
Academy High School who was stopped from giving a speech at his school's
commencement ceremony, found a new audience – over 400,000 people to be exact –
last week.
The valedictorian's planned speech was cancelled after the school
found out that he was planning to come out as gay.
After the cancellation made the news, Larry Wilmore, host of The
Nightly Show, flew the teen to New York to deliver the banned part of the
speech on the show last Thursday.
The school's attorney Barry Arrington was quoted as saying in the
Daily Camera that a graduation speech is not the time for a student to 'push
his personal agenda on a captive audience.'
The teen shares his 'biggest secret of all' in his speech: 'I'm
gay… When I was writing this speech, I was endlessly debating with myself
whether I should reveal this, on account of how divisive an issue this is and
how homosexuals tend to be stereotyped, and I thought that, if I did, I should
repeatedly apologize and beg you guys not to think any differently of me.
'But then I realized: I don't have to. I shouldn’t have to. If
there's one thing I learned at this school, it's that we can still be friends even
if we profoundly disagree with each other.'
Young is set to attend Rutgers University in the fall.
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