Rosedale, NY (WPIX) — Despite winning his school’s speech writing competition, a Queens fifth grader was told by the principal that he won’t be allowed to perform it for his classmates because of the topic — same sex marriage.
“I was a little bummed out because I thought my speech, my original speech was really going to win,” said Kameron Slade, a 5th grader at P.S. 195 in Rosedale, Queens.
The elementary school held a competition in which students would write speeches that describe democracy. Slade’s speech won in his class competition but due to the controversial topic, school officials asked him to write a different speech.
“It’s something that the principal felt that she needed more due diligence with the parent community… topic of the speech itself,” said School Chancellor Dennis Walcott.
His original class winning discourse derived from a conversation he had with his mother when she explained the issue of same-sex marriage. In Slade’s speech, he asked for gays to be treated with equality on all stances, including marriage. The 10-year-old boy’s speech included influence from his mother’s friends, who are gay.
“They seemed happy,” he said. “Best of all, they seemed to love each other. The only difference was that there were two moms instead of a mother and a father.”
And Slade’s main point in his speech: “No matter what orientation are you should be treated the same way as a straight person.”
It seems more people are getting to hear 5th grader Kameron Slade thoughts about same-sex marriage than if he would have gotten to give his speech as part of his schools Democracy Speeches competition today.
Now, the school says they’ll still consider Slade’s original speech as part of the competition and let him speak his mind on Monday. But, this will only be after parents receive a letter, warning them about the subject matter of the speech.
“People don’t really want to talk about this to their children and there no point of hiding it, they can sneak stuff, they can search on computer,” Slade said. “They can watch it on the news.”
