For many years, my school has held an annual competition where everyone in the lower years write a speech on three or four set topics. We are an all girls school. In my year we were allowed to either write about a charity or make up a charity, or about how we don't care about the environment, people who inspire me or what celebrity would you be for a day. We then go on to reading our speeches to our classes and we vote the best speech. My friend in a different form to me made up a charity, titling her speech "Help The Homophobes". She gained the most votes, thus winning. In her public speaking, she addresses the issue of homophobia, and how it is still a huge problem in our modern society. She talks about hate crimes, homophobia in social media (e.g. The thousands of homophobic tweets that are posted daily). I, from personal experience, have been subjected to homophobic comments before in my life (not about me myself but about people close to me. I will not specify who). She has been told by our English teacher she is not allowed to do her public speaking in front of the lower school as she may 'offend' somebody. Some other reasons she has been given is that the lower years do not know enough about the LGBTQ+ community. However this is untrue as I know many people in my school (which is an all girls school) are gay, bisexual/biromantic, pansexual, panromantic etc. One other mediocre reason she was given as to why she could not stand up and speak this speech is because it may 'influence' the younger years. Influence them with what? And how? Another thing is, how can you say that to someone who has written something that is supposed to educate people on something they don't know? Yes homophobia and homosexuality is a very difficult subject, but honestly, could they have given a worse reason for her to not do her speech? Or even, why are they stopping her at all? Change the stigma around LGBTQ+ by signing this petition. Thank you for your time.