“I have a teen.”

For many years now, my 16-year-old has been interested in gay rights—ever since she produced a 7th-grade “persuasive essay” entitled, “Gay Marriage: It’s Beneficial, So Why Not?” The thesis was that everyone in the world wants to have children, and they will therefore do all sorts of things to get them, including convincing themselves that they’re straight in order to have the opportunity to reproduce with someone of the opposite sex; that sort of self-delusion, she reasoned, could never last forever, so the parents would end up getting divorced at some point—and that would hurt the children. Since she was 12, I viewed her confidence that everyone wants children, and her concern about anything that might hurt children, to be pretty narcissistic. But I still thought she had a valid point.

So I thought she’d jump at the chance to spend her day off from school to come hear Evan Wolfson give a talk at the Law School in celebration of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. (One reason for the invitation to Wolfson, the founder and executive director of Freedom to Marry, was in recognition of the University’s Spectrum Center’s 40th anniversary; the various schools and colleges have committed to putting on LGBT-themed events all year long, and this was one offering by the Law School.) Wolfson gave an inspired, and inspirational, speech, as one would expect. 

But my daughter was not in attendance. Turns out her political passions, in coming head-to-head with her 16-year-old slacker sentiments, lost. “Ummm. No,” was her response to my suggestion, with a somewhat pitying smile for my hopeful innocence. “I’ll just … hang out, instead.” Ah. Of course.

It was a moving event nonetheless. I was so impressed with the speech that, perhaps in some small way emulating MLK himself, I was able to rise above the fact that Wolfson is a Harvard Law grad. Now that’s tolerance.

-Dean Z.
Assistant Dean for Admissions
and Special Counsel for Professional Strategies