Reply #107: She's been impressing me for awhile ... [View All]

[RoyGBiv]

I'm really not sure where she picks it all up. I guess I bleed off on her a little, but I've never pushed an ideology at her. She makes up her own mind.

Her mom is far more conservative than I am. She's a teacher and tends to vote Democrat, but I'm the "psycho liberal," to use one famous phrase in my family's description of me. My daughter is more "psycho" than I am.

At the age of 14, without telling anyone except a like-minded teacher and eventually her mother and me the day before it happened, she organized a day of silence at her school for Matt Shepard. I didn't even realize she knew who he was at the time.

It was very cool, though. The teacher, inspired by her commitment and aware a lot of the other teachers were going to object strongly to it, let her know he had a lawyer friend from college who'd come in pro-bono if it came to that. And it didn't, amazingly. She gave them nothing they could attack.

It was awesome.

And kids are still doing it at her old high school. Her and one of her friends started a new tradition.