Dem
51
GOP
49
And now, the companion to the previous piece. Christopher Landis is the choir director at Hingham Middle School in Massachusetts. He's also gay. However, he kept his identity a secret from his students, because while Massachusetts is a blue state, there are still many pockets of social conservatism there. Keeping the secret meant that he did not tell any of his charges about his pending wedding to fiancé Joe Michienzie.
One wonders exactly how much in the dark Landis' students really were, since "my friend Joe" was in attendance for every public performance the choir gave. Certainly, a couple of the parents figured it out, and they contacted Michienzie to see if they might do something in honor of the wedding. Michienzie thought it would be nice to have a choir performance, and so an e-mail went out to the 70 choir members. The two parents who were organizing were hoping to get maybe 15 volunteers, but Landis is quite beloved by his students, so they got... 50. There were multiple weekends' worth of secret rehearsals, along with numerous other logistical challenges that had to be dealt with.
The rehearsals-in-secret apparently worked, because Landis had no clue what was going on until guests at his wedding rehearsal brunch started picking up their phones and pointing their cameras in his direction. At that point, Michienzie announced the choir members, who filed in and performed a stirring rendition of The Beatles' All You Need Is Love. Here's the video:
John Lennon obviously did not live to see the performance of the song he wrote, but we suspect he would have approved.
Anyhow, with all these book bans, and anti-drag-show laws, and other LGBTQ-limiting actions that come from groups like the ones that support Bernie Moreno, the justification is always "think of the children." Invariably, it seems, the children show that they are doing just fine with all of this, thank you very much. (Z)