High school is a really bad place for most people. I’ll never forget high school, obviously because it took up four years of my life. Fast forwarding through most of the gory details, one story sticks out because of the sheer ridiculousness of it.
I tried to start a GSA club in my high school. GSA is a gay-straight alliance group which is for spreading positivity and pulling students together. Our main objective was to help kids who were in the closet or being bullied, and we wanted to pair them with others who could talk to them and make them be comfortable in their own skin.
We didn’t want to leave the straight people out so we let them come, too. At my school, we had about six different Christian oriented clubs for students. Unfortunately, anywhere in the south hates anything different from their Christian beliefs.
We found an amazing teacher to represent us and help us build our club. She had been my student teacher for English in tenth grade. She was cool and young and loved her students. She was excited to help us form our club because it would help the scared LGBT kids who needed a home other than the arts departments.
Parents called the administration in absolute rage. They were pissed because she was “preaching the gay agenda,” and parents and students threatened the members of the GSA club physically. People who were associated with the club were subjected to bullying and harassment. North Paulding was a special place full of a special kind of racist, homophobic, transphobic, and sexist people.
Phil (I’m naming him Phil because I don’t want to throw out his real name) was a boy, I say boy because there is no way to call him a man, and he was one of the bullies who wished they had never said anything at all. I was in third period when someone told me what he said. Phil said that “if gay people can have a club here, then so should ISIS.” A crazy, outlandish statement to make.
Phil was in my physics class, and I was going to stand up to him when I got there. I talked myself up for the rest of third period, ran to physics through the overcrowded hallways full of ruthless teenagers, and sat in wait for him in the classroom. Once the class was full, the teacher was in the hall, and Phil was there, I planned to tell him off. Humiliated him.
I stood in front of his desk and loudly exclaimed, “So you think gay people are like ISIS, yeah?”
And he was surprised. I guess he never thought anyone would stand up to him because he was so popular.
“What?” He said dumbfoundedly.
“Yeah, you think gay people are terrorists. That’s exactly what you said.” I replied, laughing a bit at him.
“No, I-I didn’t say that.” He knew he had stepped in it and was embarrassed for what he said offhandedly at lunch.
“Yes, you did. You said ‘if gay people can have a club, so should ISIS,’ that’s what you said.” I told him.
I had caught the attention of the other kids in class, and they were enjoying the performance. At this point, he was upset, embarrassed, and he wanted to defend his actions now that he knew he couldn’t deny he had said it.
“Well it’s my job as a Christian—" and I interrupted him. I interrupted him and said “It is your job as a Christian to love all of God's creations. It is not your place to judge people.”
He was dumbfounded and had nothing else to say because he couldn’t argue with my logic. He knew I was right and what he said was dumb. A few kids in the class actually cheered and clapped after I spoke. I still remember all of this in great detail to this day.
When the teacher came in, we sat down and pretended nothing happened. But that clap back was talked about for a couple of weeks before the next scandal occurred.
Small side note: All of the events are true, but for the sake of comedy I have added some hyperbole to the story.
