Sean Simonson, Benilde-St. Margaret's senior whose editorial "Life as a Gay Teenager" was censored by the school administration, MPR Photo by Nikki Tundel

…all of these years since I graduated from that Minneapolis Catholic high school – where I tried to disappear as much as possible while enduring four years as a verbally abused gay teen from 1983-87 while teachers and administrators sanctioned it with their silence – is on my mind today as I read about the current examples of hypocrisy at the very same school, where president Bob Tift and principal Sue Skinner censored the editorial “Life as a Gay Teenager” by senior Sean Simonson (plus an editorial critical of the $1 million spent by Archbishop Nienstedt on the production and distribution of Preserving Marriage in Minnesota, a DVD which explicitly endorses an amendment to the state constitution to bar homosexuals right to marry under civil law) from the student newspaper because there was “…confusion about the teachings of the Catholic Church; therefore, the administration exercised its prerogative to have the material removed from the website” – and I wonder just what kind of adults administer a school where young vulnerable students publicly declare that they are being driven to contemplate suicide by daily verbal abuse and still don’t take meaningful action – while silencing dialog about the situation – seeming more concerned with appearances and “lack of confusion”?…but with stories coming in from Gawker, The Washington Post, Minnesota Public Radio, The Advocate, The Star-Tribune, The Pioneer Press, The City Pages, Just Out, Minnesota Post, Huffington Post, the local Fox and CBS TV news, Student Press Law Center, Change.org, and journalist Nick Coleman, I hope they are duly shamed into action – like FINALLY allowing the students to organize a gay-straight alliance, which the administration has always banned. (link to the original censored text with original comments from the school community)