Kids These Days

A local newspaper recently published an op-ed piece in favor of gay marriage that's been bouncing around the community here the last couple weeks.

It is within everyone that you have to be a better person, live for a better cause, and provide for the better life. It's my story, or rather struggle, that I hope you’ll see why America needs its views changed on homosexuality.

But what makes this piece truly interesting is its lead sentence: "I’m 14 years old, and yes, I am gay."

I'm struck by the amount of courage this must have taken, to risk all that being "different" can entail, to expose one's self to verbal and physical abuse. But it also pleases me to know that we're in an age where a kid can write something like this, and that maybe his schoolmates' reactions will be nothing more than "hey, cool, whatever."

It reminds me that from here, things are only going to get better. Like Battlin' Bill Heslop said, "You can't stop progress."

Read the whole thing here.