Last week one of my roommates showed me and interview of a 10 year old boy,Will, that is refusing to stand up and join in the reciting of the pledge of allegiance. He is only in 5th grade but he is greatly troubled participating in the act until America lives up to ideals in the line of "liberty and justice for all". He claims to want to be a lawyer, therefore he analyzed what he was truly saying when reciting the pledge. He states that "gays and lesbians cant marry, there is still a lot of racism and sexism in the world". Will refuses to "swear" that gays and lesbians have the same rights that all heterosexuals do. Until he feels like the country is changing and there really is equality for all human beings he will sit down silently while the rest of the class stands to say it. When his teacher finally was fed-up with his behavior he told her"solemnly with a little bit of malice in my voice, ma'am with all do respect, you can go jump off a bridge". Of course this had repercussions and he wrote a letter apologizing, but it did add to the impact of his protest.
In doing this he has constantly been called gay himself by his peers at school, which he is not, but it seems that clearly in our society men, or in this case boys, aren't generally portrayed to support gay rights unless they are in fact gay themselves. He claims that this is so important to him because "I've grown up with a lot of people and I'm good friends with a lot of people that are gay". There is a sense of irony in this statement considering he is only 10 years old but with his flamboyant vocabulary and eloquence it is easy to respect him and understand that he genuinely believes in what he is standing up for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZiBiJDLbmY
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