The Closet with an Open Door

From the Providence Journal:

The teens came from as far away as Maryland and from nearby Pawtucket, numbering more than 2,700, wearing T-shirts, body art and baseball caps and looking very much a cross section of American youth.

But many of these teens are different. They define themselves, not by their tattoos or nose rings, but by daring, they say, to do what is considered in many high schools to be unequivocally uncool: Being openly...

You know, the adjective that I've left off the end of that quotation certainly isn't the one that those who define our popular culture would lead you to expect. But then, such expectations have been drastically disconnected from actual experience for many years, at least in the Northeast, and at least since I was in high school in the late '80s and early '90s — and even throughout my time in elementary school. The quality that those kids are compelled to diminish in their young public lives is — of course — being religious:

[Philip "P.J." Shea, 18, of Pawtucket,] plans to keep this most recent card locked in a safe in his bedroom. "I made a promise to myself that I would stay a virgin until I'm married," Shea said.

Some of his high school friends don't get it. Shea doesn't care. What's important is that most of the boys under that tent understood the need to fight the temptations of alcohol, pornography, premarital sex and all the other "lies the devil whispers," as Righteous B put it.

Welcome to Steubenville East, a two-day Catholic youth conference at LaSalette Shrine.

Toward the end of the conference, a priest asked anybody considering entering the priesthood or religious life to step forward. He then asked the crowd not to single them out when they returned to their schools so that they wouldn't be discouraged. I know that, when I was that age, I wouldn't have been afraid to mock them, nor would I have expected any consequences for doing so, through either social pressure or disciplinary action. Little would I have known that believers have a source of support of which the approval of peers is but a faint echo:

A stocky teen with a surfer's air, [Geoff] Edwards said he has been religious since he was a child. He said some people tease him about being religious. "But it's nothing compared to the suffering that Jesus Christ went through."

Actually, it's probably more true that a tacit understanding would have been my motivation.