Steph

The pride in Paris have been cancelled this weekend (third year in a row thar they were trying to do so, first year that they manage to do it) and people that dared to march have been repressed by policemen and threaten in order to make them hide their flags. A policeman told them "the repression time has come". In the US, trans people suicidal rate have gone up of 74% the past year. In oh so many countries, queer rights are disapearing.

A lot of people are scared in the world. A lot of queer people. Of POC people. Of disabled people. And so on.

But hope is a powerful thing. It makes joy possible. And it makes everything worth fighting for.

We need more HR. More hope. More joy. More pride.

And we need it now more than ever.

We shouldn't have to feel fear over being ourselves.

Don't forget that the closet kills too. It does so in silence. But it does.

"Is there a favorite moment at BU, not playing hockey, that you can share with us?"

To breaking out the soft smiles when he gets to talk about Mack

Do I personally think it's a good idea for 18yr olds to get married? No. I think at that age you're pretty young to get married and your choice in partner is not likely to be great. Maybe you only just met your spouse (and thus don't know them that well). Maybe you were high school sweethearts and while you know what your spouse is like while they're going through those years, you don't know what they're going to be like after college or after joining the workforce, and those years can be crazy formative. Maybe, though I hope not, you're marrying someone that your parents picked out for you or otherwise arranged, in which case there's a lot wrong (and you should have protections from familial abuse).

However. I also don't think that there should be any restrictions on 18yr olds getting married. At 18 you are a legal adult (in the majority of countries) and thus you have the right to make even the stupidest of decisions about what happens to you and your body. You can get regrettable tattoos. You can wreck your lungs smoking. You can go into debt buying the world's most expensive car. You should be able to chose to marry your dumb high school sweetheart and you should also be able to chose to divorce them a year later.

I feel as though there's this growing sentiment of "well sure this person is technically an adult, but they're still *young* so they should be protected from making bad choices" and that's. Hm. Young or mentally young or emotionally mature is something that people seem to have a difficult time defining on a level that can actually be logistically enforced or implemented. And we see these days what can happen when people *do* try to implement "but you're so yooooung (and dumb)" policies like what's happening with trans people where "legal adult" is still too young to transition so maybe 25 is the new limit at which you can transition but blah-blah debunked science about brain development so maybe the new limit should be 30 - " etc etc.

At 18, as a legal adult, you should have the freedom to make the decision to get married. You should have the freedom to make any dumb, regrettable, poorly thought out decision that you want, and you should have the freedom of an adult to either reap the rewards or suffer the consequences of your decisions. That's life, baby. Your hand cannot and should not be held forever until some arbitrary time at which some random person thinks you're "old enough". We have an obligation to respect people's rights to make choices that we think are bad. We have an obligation to respect people's rights to do things that they can't take back because we think a hypothetical future version of them could regret it.

Since 2007 unbaptized children go to heaven and limbo doesn't exists anymore