Speaking at graduation is an important assignment. All your classmates will hear it, some may even listen to it and remember it. Now, with bookface and the intranets, those speeches will live on forever.
And looking back at some of those recorded messages, you get to see what the social, political, and cultural climate is like.
We wonder what people will think when they look back on the the speech from the 2022 senior class president of Pine View School for the Gifted. As he took to the stand at his graduation and delivered his graduation speech, he knew he had to tread carefully, as the political climate was a swamp.
Zander Moricz wanted to use this time to speak about his experience as a gay student or criticize House Bill 1557, which supporters call the “Parental Rights in Education” …colloquially known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law. However, Moricz had been warned that his microphone would be cut off if he made any mention or reference to that law. After organizing a student walkout against the then-pending legislation and a similar protest in downtown Sarasota he decided to deliver his speech in a creative way.
He spoke about his curly hair. His curly hair was a part of who he is. So, he learned to embrace it. – MySunCoast.com
“Don’t Say Gay” is the law of the land in Florida and looks like it soon will be in so many other republican’t run states in the U.S. They’re triggered about our ability to speak our open minds and that scares them back behind their white hoods and bibles.
Moricz said the principal told him such comments would be “polarizing and not school appropriate.” He said his face turned red. “I’m told that my human rights are controversial and therefore not appropriate for school setting. I’m the class president and my human rights are not appropriate for my speech at my school graduation.”
Moricz crafted a graduation speech that is going viral as it seems we as a community must return to the made up languages, hand gestures, hankie codes, for “our kind” cannot be open in public as to who we are for it make make fragile christians and heterosexuals uncomfortable.
How did Moricz address his homosexuality and the little ronnie desantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” law? “I used to hate my curls I spent mornings and nights embarrassed of them trying desperately to straighten this part of who I am but the daily damage of trying to fix myself became too much to endure.”
Below is Moricz’s full graduation speech, he gets into his personal identity as a “curly haired” individual around the 3:45 mark, but all of it is a great speech.
Did anyone else feel like Zander was pushed back into the closet? Anyone else feel that is the danger with little ronnie and his fellow fragile republican’ts in power dictating what is right and wrong in our society?
As Moricz stresses, the youth that is turning 18 has a responsibility to not give power to those that will abuse it, that will use it to hurt us.
Moricz’s speech and his fight against little ronnie desantis has been covered by many, even Good Morning America this morning. And his fight is going more than just speech, as Moricz is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against desantis.
We need the Blue Wave to crash the poles in November and in the primaries. We also need the youth like Moricz to help the Youth Wave to come through.
As for little ronnie (he does not deserve capitalization), every time he speaks, doesn’t little ronnie desantis sound like he is explaining to his niece why it’s her fault he got her pregnant? The man is a slime ball, scum of the earth, the lowest of lows.
Keep up the good fight, Zander, and thank you.
This article contains opinions of this writer and may not reflect the opinions of others at Instinct Magazine.
Sources: MySunCoast.com , ABC
Seems like a good gay role model.