Catholic School Rejected Its Gay Valedictorian’s Speech. So He Gave It With a Bullhorn.

[SummerMadness]

Catholic School Rejected Its Gay Valedictorian’s Speech. So He Gave It With a Bullhorn.

This wasn’t the way Christian Bales planned to leave high school.

Mr. Bales, an 18-year-old with a passion for conservation science, worked hard at Holy Cross, a Catholic school in Covington, Ky., earning the honor of valedictorian. He looked forward to delivering a commencement speech at the graduation on Friday.

Then something happened that left him “kind of shocked,” he said.

The principal and other officials told him on Friday that the Diocese of Covington had deemed his speech too angry and confrontational, Mr. Bales said.

Mr. Bales is gay and describes himself as gender nonconforming. His speech, which can be read in full here, makes no mention of either.

 

[keith99]

A rather tame address. It seems to me the school taught him well only to finish that stage of his education by spitting in his face.

 

[TLK Valentine]

I see nothing angry or confrontational in the speech.

 

[SummerMadness]

I am still trying to figure out what is angry and controversial in his speech? Is is the mention of Stoneman Douglas? Or the March for Life? It really was a speech telling his classmates they are important and while they think they are the ones learning, they are also teaching others.

 

[PloverWing]

Most commencement speeches are bland and forgettable. This speech describes young people as taking the actions that "desensitized" older people often fail to take:

"'The young people will win' because we’re finished being complacent. There’s a misguided notion that wisdom is directly proportional to age, but we’re disproving that daily. Sometimes the wisest are the youngest in our lives, the ones who haven’t yet been desensitized to the atrocities of our world. Therefore, we young people must be the educators. The young people must be willing to speak candidly about issues, and we mustn’t tremble in the face of the institutions that try to silence us."

Ironically, the institution did, in fact, try to silence him. I don't know if they had also tried to silence him on past occasions.

Depending on the political climate in Kentucky, the gun control issue and the Jefferson Davis issue may have also made some listeners uncomfortable.

I'm not criticizing the speaker. I think the speech is gutsy and inspiring, and probably right, and I hope Mr. Bales goes out and changes the world. But I can see that it might not be as bland as his administration was hoping for.

 

[keith99]

Most commencement speeches are bland and forgettable. This speech describes young people as taking the actions that "desensitized" older people often fail to take:

"'The young people will win' because we’re finished being complacent. There’s a misguided notion that wisdom is directly proportional to age, but we’re disproving that daily. Sometimes the wisest are the youngest in our lives, the ones who haven’t yet been desensitized to the atrocities of our world. Therefore, we young people must be the educators. The young people must be willing to speak candidly about issues, and we mustn’t tremble in the face of the institutions that try to silence us."

Ironically, the institution did, in fact, try to silence him. I don't know if they had also tried to silence him on past occasions.

Depending on the political climate in Kentucky, the gun control issue and the Jefferson Davis issue may have also made some listeners uncomfortable.

I'm not criticizing the speaker. I think the speech is gutsy and inspiring, and probably right, and I hope Mr. Bales goes out and changes the world. But I can see that it might not be as bland as his administration was hoping for.

The speech I had written for Jr. High graduation was also squashed. Come to think of it all the speeches were and the other two students were both excellent writers and fairly compliant.

I was given the title 'Our Responsibility'. They wanted something bland and apolitical. Unfortunately it was not hard to predict the future and I saw our responsibility to involve real issues, things like an unjust war that was becoming ever more unpopular. Not at all the bland platitudes they had hoped for.