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| Empty chairs, as seen on a screen outside Hill Auditorium |
I graduated law school yesterday, but I only attended a portion of my commencement. Over 100 graduates and guests walked out of the ceremony before our guest speaker and homophobe, Senator Rob Portman, gave his speech. I will always remember this day.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Michigan Law's selection of Senator Rob Portman as graduation speaker. He has an extreme anti-gay voting record as a Congressman. The fact that he was given the honor of speaking to us at our celebratory event has understandably caused a great deal of controversy, which I won't completely rehash here, since it is the subject of my earlier post. Earlier, I wrote:
I will not stand to listen to a homophobe tell me at my graduation that I have the whole world at my disposal, my whole life ahead of me, when he would deny access to a basic part of that world and a basic part of that life to a large portion of my class, my family, and my friends. I will not hear Senator Portman's speech because I will not sit for it. Nor will I be shaking his hand at graduation. I would rather walk out of my own graduation ceremony for which I have waited three long, hard years. I do not yet know how many of my classmates will join me. I can only hope that it doesn't come to that, and either Senator Portman or Dean Caminker manages to rectify the situation so that we can all enjoy what should be a celebratory day.Well, it turns out that my classmates did join me, and I've never been prouder to be a Michigan Law graduate. Quite a feat for a day that had promised to make me ashamed of my school.
