When Kameron Slade’s fifth-grade class at PS 195 in the New York City borough of Queens held a speech competition, he decided to speak on the topic of marriage equality. Slade’s speech was good enough to win, meaning he advanced to a school-wide contest scheduled to be held today. But his elementary school principal blocked Kameron from doing so, denying him the right to speak on his chosen topic because, according to Slade’s mother, she felt the topic was “inappropriate.”
So, to their credit, television channel NY1 gave Slade a chance to deliver his speech for their cameras; you can watch the video below. When you do, you won’t find anything remotely inappropriate. What you will find is an intelligent, open-minded, adorable young man speaking simply and eloquently about tolerance and acceptance. Zack Ford at ThinkProgress has a partial transcript of Slade’s remarks here.
According to NY1′s report, the New York City Department of Education is planning to give Slade an opportunity to deliver his marriage equality speech in “some sort of a different assembly.” But in the meantime, in order not to be disqualified from the contest by his principal, Slade wrote a new speech about the prevention of animal cruelty.
H/t: Andy; photo courtesy of ThinkProgress
Can we clone this kid? Please?
Just proves this child has more brains and common sense then the principal who runs his school! They need to fire her and quickly!
Very bright and nice kid who understand love and tolerance at the age of 11. Wonderful!
Well done, Kameron!
Another President Obama in the making-he gets it!
Congratulations my young friend.
This youngster has more brains and the gift of compassion that the so called Christian, Buster Wilson we just had a visit from.
And this boy’s speech was banned, and not allowed to be expressed.
As I’m sure we could guess, Buster would applaud the suppression of this boy’s free speech, while complaining that his own defamation of gay people is being silenced (when it isn’t).
Not even here.
Buster was allowed to post as many comments any time and none of them were banned or wiped.
The same can’t be said of sites like Ruth Institute, NOM, AFTAH and FRC.
Any dissent is banned or wiped from their sites.
So who is silencing who?
And a fifth grader is showing that he’s smarter than Buster Wilson.
Something that should embarrass Wilson and why we should ‘suffer the little children’.
It’s because the honesty and innocence of children is what should make the adults honest too.
You can’t LIE to children, and this child’s own parents DIDN’T lie to him.
They gave him an honest and truthful exposure to gay people and this was the result.
This is what makes Fischer and Wilson LIARS and weak cowardly ones at that.
Every time someone tries to ban a book, movie (or speech in this case) the publicity just causes it to reach a wider audience. The principal is a douche, but she unintentionally did us a favor.
What? You can’t lie to children? You aren’t seriously presenting that as some “evidence” that we are wrong, are you? Well, of course you are.
He seems like a fine young man, but don’t tell me you can’t MOLD a child’s understanding amd values! If you believe that, you are embarrassingly displaying your ignorance of children, early childhood development, and the power of environment on a young mind.
I’m not embarrassed about anything. I don’t hate, I’m not weak, and I’m no coward.
Dream on…….
And you’d know ALL about ‘molding’ minds & values since fundies (I know this, I was raised as one)recruit children to be molded & brainwashed into the ‘Jesus Loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so…’ cult.