Graeme Taylor is all smiles as he chats with Ellen DeGeneres on a new episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
| by Just | 2010 |
The 14-year-old openly gay student spoke out in support of his teacher, Jay McDowell, a high school economics teacher in Michigan who was suspended without pay for a day after an incident in his classroom. Jay removed a student from his class after the student said that he did not accept gays.
Graeme spoke in Jay’s defense at a school board meeting, saying, “I’ve been in classrooms where children have said the worst things – the kinds of things that drove me to a suicide attempt when I was only 9 years old.”
“These are the things that hurt a lot,” Graeme added. “There is a silent holocaust out there, in which an estimated 6 million gay people every year kill themselves.”