“No LGBT prom buddies.”

“I will sign the petition."

My high school is a Catholic private school located in suburban Minnesota where LGBTQA rights have never been supported or accepted. I, an Indian and a Hindu, decided to ask one of my female friends to prom as prom season was approaching.

Going forward with my plan, I was most worried about the administration getting on our case about it and possibly not even allowing us go to prom. I was wrong. The administration gave us guidance in our situation. To my surprise, the student body is who we had to worry about, even though we did end up getting support from some of the students. The uproar from the students was coming from people who couldn't even go to prom that year, rendering their opinions to be irrelevant to their own lives.

Throughout this situation, the LGBTQA community at my school felt attacked, hurt, and compromised. The community at my school had not even been active until this point because we knew the disapproval we would all receive. We took the horrible situation at hand and we viewed this altercation as our chance to have a voice, make a name for ourselves, and advocate for our rights in the school. We did so by taking our situation to the administration and settled our disputes with those who started to say and do inappropriate and hurtful things regarding the "promposal."

As an attempt to find a solution to the dispute, the LGBTQA community at my school assessed the problem we had. We came to the conclusion that the issue was that over the years, our high school had only been teaching us reasons why homosexuality was wrong and should be frowned upon. We realized that in our curriculum students have never actually been taught to respect those who are part of the LGBTQA community and have not been explained what sexual orientation really is, leaving people ill-informed.

By this incident occurring, I genuinely hope that we not only left our mark but that we taught people something- general respect. Not everyone is going to have the same mindset. Not everyone will share the same faith. Beliefs will be different from one person to another. However, instead of viewing this as a hindrance, one should see that this just further adds to the diversity of the world, in mind, nature, culture, ethnicity, religion, etc. However, basic human respect is universally expected. To accept that not everyone will support what you support, you must have confidence in what you believe and stand for. The essence of respect from one human to another is essential to a positive environment, which can promote peace.