Life has a way of going on just fine

Matthew Pope is a senior at Shawnee Mission East High School in Kansas City:

Angela C. Bond/The Kansas City Pitch

Bright young man; personable. Good school, though "often stereotyped as conservative and snobby." Mom's a nurse; his dad died his junior year. Pope's headed for the University of Oklahoma this fall. He's co-captain of the cheerleading squad, and got elected homecoming king out of a field of twelve.

Turns out he's gay,too. Came out his freshman year. Some tense times with the parental units followed, but he was lucky to have friends and two siblings stand by him while they sorted through it.

So everybody at school knew it when the vote came and they elected Pope anyway. No big deal. Life went on, everybody had a good time at homecoming.

Change comes in fits and starts, in this place and that, and often under the radar of national news, presidential candidates, political parities and pundits. The high school student who's gay story in the international news this week has been the negative one, where a busybody principal in Memphis keeps a big list on the wall next to her desk of all the students she hears are dating. She wants to make sure there are no "public displays of affection" in her school. Even though the two male students never engaged in any, the principal summoned their parents in to tell them she'd be having no gay kids in her school.

Still, it's apparent younger people are adapting to the realities of a human population their elders have tried to suppress and deny for decades. That's encouraging.