In his inauguration address, President Barack Obama declared, “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.” Indeed, Obama has done more for the cause of LGBT rights than any other president in U.S. history. After his public endorsement of gay marriage last year, I sat my much younger brothers down to explain the value of LGBT equality, and without much fight, they agreed with everything I said. It’s truly amazing how far we’ve come.
When I was in middle school, we were taught by liberal instructors to be “tolerant” of gays. Now we’ve moved well past tolerance to potential social and legal equality and acceptance. Hopefully, a generation from now children will never have to go through the same agonizing experience I went through of hiding who they really are, and we can abandon the minimum coverage of “tolerance” for full-blown equality.
Saalim Carter
Class of 2007
