Mountain Vista High School has recently started a Gay Straight Alliance (GSA), a place where students of any orientation can come together to support each other. A place where the indirect bullying and discrimination can cease for a few hours.  It could be a place where people who are feeling completely left out and misplaced can find others who are like them, and create bonds with people who would never critic them.  There is nothing better than an accepting group of people in a town with a high population of people who aren’t very accepting.
                                            
However with the implementation of the GSA, the school located inside “the bubble where everything is perfect” counteracted this new start quickly. “F*g,” “Jesus hates you,” ludicrously scrawled across the posters set up mere hours before.  An advertisement put up for a safe place has almost immediately been vandalized by the animosity of hateful High School students.
These students are part of a growing population of people that share their opinions, no matter how imbecilic or foolish they are.  Sometimes it isn’t even
about sexual orientation, sometimes it’s about people with disabilities, mental or
physical.  These opinions could be about anyone that is different in the slightest way.

High school students are still growing up and changing, yet they still manage to form strong opinions about something they know very little about.  They know about and understand differences in sexual orientation about as much as a dead fish understands sexual orientation.  It even extends to a point where they don’t believe it exists. Really?

The world is changing, and has been changing since the beginning of time.  New things are entering the world, whether it be new ideas or people.  Change is hard for people, especially when life is completely okay for them right now.  When the white fence surrounding the clean house is painted rainbow, the people get startled and confused.  

But only recently have people, regardless of the amount of substance between their ears, begun to put these opinions out in the open world.  The flaw in this however, is that these preachers are speaking to brainless zombies who absorb any information like sponges. 

The truth is that people, especially in “Utopian” societies, have become more and more ignorant of their surroundings.  They don’t particularly care about anybody but themselves, and don’t care to hear any more opinions than the ones they’ve been brainwashed to believe. 

But, I can’t change the way people are, especially if its ignorance.  This is one of many arguments that could possibly go on until both parties are too tired to try any more.

The only way we can change the way people view things is to take the smallest of steps.  We can’t directly pop the bubble we are surrounded in, but we can make the bubble smaller.

The population of people who are willing to admit they are “different” in any social way will grow, whether it is in Highlands Ranch or anywhere else.  Once this group of people is expanded, there is bound to be more people who accept them.

Someone who doesn’t fully understand social differences, or does not accept them, may have a best friend from 1st grade come out to them as gay, bisexual or admit to having a mental disorder.  This person, whom they know and care about, is different than them, but that should not matter, because they are best friends.  This person will know that this new information should not end their friendship.  After this close friends’ mind is changed about “horrific” things like being gay, or mentally challenged in some way, the rest of their friends will eventually accept it too.  Soon enough, the only person who is a misfit is whoever decides to not approve of this change. 

Slow changes like this are bound to happen, regardless if it is the speed of a turtle stuck in mud. 
Society doesn’t like change; however, they will accept change in spoon-fed bites that come to their mouths like trains, choo-chooing all along the way.

Problems that occurred 100’s of years ago have vanished for the most part.  There are a select few people that still believe that witches should be dunked underwater to see if they are truly witches.  However just like the witches in those older times, the people that believe in witches are out casted.

However long it does take for Mountain Vista or Highlands Ranch to accept that some people are different than “moderately above average,” I yearn to see the day where the words “fa***t,” “retarded,” and “autistic,” go back to their original meaning, rather than the insult that they do not deserve to be.