Excellent question! I guess it shouldn't really matter that this happened in Massachusetts, but to be honest with you, that's partly what got me interested in the story.

Queer youth in places like Oklahoma, Texas, and Florida deserve to live their best lives and be happy. But I guess since those states are dominated by the Republican Party, we can sort of dismiss injustice as expected. Sometimes when I write stories about people who live in states like that, I get comments that they should know better than to live there.

That's not really a solution for anybody, of course. And I don't want to make it sound like it should be one.

Still, when news like this comes out of a place like Gloucester, it's all the more impactful because of how unexpected it is.

That's why I'm trying to help Jayden share his story. He wants to wake people up to the dehumanizing rhetoric, and I very much hope he succeeds.