In case you're wondering how the situation with Albuquerque transteen Damian Garcia played out, when the ceremony kicked off at 10 AM MDT yesterday the Class of 2013 of St Pius X HS was one member short. While his classmates left a seat open for him in protest, Damian decided to skip his graduation after the archdiocese of Santa Fe and the school refused to budge on letting him wear a black gown to the ceremony.
“I’m fully respecting this and myself by not walking and/or attending the ceremony at all,” he said on his Facebook page.
Meanwhile at the Santa Ana Star Center in Rio Rancho, NM where the ceremony was held, Michael J. Sheehan, the archbishop of Santa Fe, tried to make it sound like he was being persecuted as the Roman Catholic Church tends to do when they get caught in their public displays of transphobia.
In his address to the nearly 200 graduates Sheehan talked about discrimination and standing up for what’s right, warning students that sometimes in life they will be persecuted for standing up for their Christian values.
Archbishop Sheehan, discrimination against and persecuting trans people is not a Christian value. You know you were wrong on the issue, especially when you wouldn't show your cowardly face to the local media to defend your bigotry.
Damian probably won't be the last trans student to go through St Pius X High, so you may as well get ready to have this conversation again.
Damian has been accepted to the University of New Mexico, and they along with the University of New Mexico's LGBT Resource Center will welcome their newest Lobo to the fold by holding a graduation ceremony for him on May 30 from 5 to 7 PM MDT in a courtyard next to Scholes Hall on their main campus.
I've seen similar headlines on news sites, and I really don't like it. To say he "skipped" graduation implies that he had a real choice in the matter; the "choice" to have one's identity invalidated or to not go does not qualify. He was forced out of attendance at his own graduation by a discriminatory policy.
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