I’m sure the readers of TMP are ready by now for some good news, after what has been one sad blow after the next for our community. Recently, The Family Research Center, has launched a petition and campaign titled, ‘Free to Believe’, inserting their belief in a Freedom of Religious right to discriminant. TMPlanet’s senior writer Lynnea Stuart, recently wrote about the consequences of such actions, and the UN vote titled. The UN Vote: Is the United States Headed Toward an LGBT Holocaust? Haven’t we as a human race witnessed this type of state sanctioned hate, and the consequences of legislated hate, against another group of people? Are we doomed to repeat the horrors of World War 2?
Recently a school that dares calls itself a Christian School, expelled a 17 year old Transgender teen. Stiles Zuschlag, was on track to be valedictorian at Tri-City Christian Academy in Somersworth, New Hampshire.
When the 17-year-old met with a school administrator in August about being identified as male, he was shocked when he was asked to “confess his sins, stop taking testosterone treatments, and receive Christian counseling.” If he refused, he’d be forced to leave the school.
Stiles, chose to leave the school, and start over at nearby Noble High School in North Berwick, Maine, just seven miles away.
As he began to make friends at his new school, he joked about being nominated for homecoming king. “I asked on Snapchat as a joke to put me in,” he told HuffPost. His peers took his request a bit more seriously than he did. “People actually did it. I didn’t really expect them to. I still can’t believe they did that for me.”
He’d be even more shocked when he showed up to the game and won the homecoming king crown. “After I won at the homecoming game, I almost started crying. My friends all put me in, people I didn’t even know put me in, everyone voted for me on the final ballot,” he said. “This experience feels like a dream. It’s something I never thought could have happened to me.”
The outpouring of love and acceptance astonished Zuschlag.
“I’ve been degraded so much in the past, I’ve conformed to other people’s beliefs and standards just to make them happy and comfortable. I’ve put myself in situations really hurtful to my mental health just to keep peace,” he explained. “God forced me out of that situation, that school, knowing that my mental health was far more important than my education. The only reason I stayed at the school for so long was for my education, for my GPA, and to just learn about God. But I was also dying there mentally and I suffered a lot.”
“God took me away from that to help me be a better person, to breathe again, to be happy again. I’m so grateful He did that for me.”
Despite hate, blindly and blasphemously disguised as Christianity, love does win and it’s true nature of brotherly love, compassion, acceptance and love for thy neighbor does prevail in the end.
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