So gutsy! I'm impressed.

I see: "greatest putt putt shot of all time".

Nice!

Not cool. The music, I mean.

@2, for me it's "man films train running over him and survives."

I'm seeing "Central Dogma" about DNA?

This has been happening for a couple days now- the videos take quite some time to show as the correct one and the video posted here is supposed to be the video posted in the next video post after this....

Right now Charles' video is showing as the mini golf, Dan's Hate Theory... is the train video.

Wow. What drama club member still in the closet by senior year has not dreamed of seizing a moment like this in front of the entire school? And to get it videoed, set it to music and open your own YouTube account for it, my hat is off to her.

I am sending this to my sister immediately. She has always made fun of how much I dramatized my own coming out to anyone who would listen, and I think this will finally make me seem shy by comparison.

Ah-ha. Clicking through on Permalink gets you to the right one, @2 & 5.

gus, somehow I'm guessing you *didn't* get that on tape, did you? :(

I think she must be contemplating a book deal.

Well, bravo to her, but I have to ask Is Santa Rosa CA really that hard a place to come out?!

@7

Word.

Canuck, I'm far too camera-shy to have let my Big Mo-ment at fifteen be filmed. As I recall I emoted way more broadly than this girl: dramatic pauses, vocal quavers, sharp intakes of breath, the whole works. Afterwards my family was hospitalized with ocular strain from all the eye-rolling I forced them to do.

@13

"hospitalized with ocular strain" FTW.

I like the fact that she turned it into more than an "I'm Gay" speech, but brought up the "it's a choice" and "it's-okay-to-be-gay-as-long-as-you-don't-act-on-it" bullshit.
And the repeated ways she tied it into MLK and his civil rights issues regarding racism was nicely done, too. I especially liked the way she used the word "liberated."
Instead of just coming out, she emphasized the current civil rights issues involved--very sophisticated for a teenager.

Very brave, very articulate, very self-possessed.

And while it might be easier to come out in Santa Rosa, California than in Mississippi, the Youtube video will be seen in Mississippi and other places less congenial than Northern California.

gus, I'm sure it was 9 degrees of hilarious, for your family anyway. Somehow I'm thinking it would benefit all of us if your sister did a slog post and gave us her rendition....hey! Strangercrombie '11, woot!

Oh jeez. I would have booed and thrown things at her when I was in high school. Not because I am prejudiced against gays. But, I am prejudiced against self-obsessed needy people who make people sit through their coming out in an assembly without a live sex act to sweeten the deal for the rest of us.

I want to like her, but I can't.

Is this an actress?

I'd like to know how this turned out. You can hear some applause at the end, but I want to know what her day-to-day life is like now.

I'd love to find a transcript of this? I mean I get the gist from the video title and commentary, but... :-P

As for "wrong video presentation" I'm getting that a lot too, though for me it seems to be pulling up older videos that Dan's posted in earlier columns. A hard refresh (for example, control key plus F5 in firefox) clears it up, but it's been an issue the last few days. It could be youtube, but I only see it here, so I wonder if thestranger.com installed or upgraded any flash and/or javascript modules at their site...

This would probably be easier to take in transcript form. No overwrought "acting." Coming out, take one, aaaaaaaaaand action!

I've got a friend who is quite keen to avoid the "I have no choice I was born this way" explanation. He tells people that he chooses to be gay. I don't think it's supposed to be a comment on whether being gay is genetic or not, it's just that he doesn't want people to think he'd change if he could.
But then, all the identity rhetoric is very different in Britain.

Ok, so this took guts. Which is why I'm going to feel like a gigantic dick for saying...

...why did she come off like one of those anti-drug speakers that come to your school and tell you a sob story about their downward spiral, which they've rehearsed in front of soooo many other schools that you end up getting bored and picking at a wad of dried gum on the bottom of the bleacher seat? I really hope that coming out to large groups of people in an effort that tries to be triumphant but ends up being an over-worked high school speech team production fail doesn't become the celebrated norm.