Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: Valedictorian

Wednesday, May 06, 2020

Valedictorian

Nicole Maines blazed the trail with the Maine Supreme Court and for the first time in Maine a trans masculine student is the state’s first trans high school valedictorian.

Belfast senior will graduate as Maine’s first transgender valedictorian
Bangor Daily News
By Abigail Curtis, BDN Staff
May 4, 2020

BELFAST, Maine — Syd Sanders is perched at the top of his 109-senior graduating class this year at Belfast Area High. The Harvard University-bound valedictorian believes he is the first transgender student in Maine — and perhaps the nation — to graduate with that distinction.

But for the 18-year-old Sanders, who gets a little embarrassed when he talks about his academic accomplishments, the label of being a transgender valedictorian is secondary to who he is as a person.

What he is more than anything, perhaps, is genuine.

“I just am who I am,” he said. “I would probably be dead if I couldn’t be who I was. I just have to be myself.”

Many trans people in Maine are living dreams thanks to a legislature that is supportive of trans people.

Back in 2011 Nicole Maines was transitioning and the school systems was going well for Nicole until the adults got involved, a custodial grandparent with the Christian Civic League of Maine backing him complained to the school system (I wrote about it here). That started a path that lead all the way to the Maine’s Supreme Court.

GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) lead the case to the Maine Supreme Court…

GLAD represented a transgender teen girl whose Orono, Maine elementary and middle schools removed her from the girls’ restroom because of her transgender status and forced her to use a staff-only, non-communal restroom in isolation from her peers. Eventually, the parents were forced to withdraw their daughter and her twin brother from the Orono school system and move them to another part of the state where they could go to school quietly and safely.

The parents also filed a complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission and ultimately decided to file a lawsuit on behalf of their daughter. GLAD represented Nicole along with Lewiston attorney Jodi L. Nofsinger of Berman & Simmons, P.A.

Nicole Maines is now an actress on the Supergirl on CW network and has appeared in 44 shows.

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Quotes

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person… People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist
James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

"The point is that there are always obstacles, whether they seem insurmountable or merely bothersome. The question is not how difficult the path, but whether in your heart, you wish to undertake the journey."
Zandru's Forge

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its got to
Be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to
Be carefully
Taught
You've got to be taught
To be
Afraid
Of people
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade

South Pacific
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rogers

Wednesday, May 06, 2020

Valedictorian

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