Gay Kentucky 8th grader calls out his school’s ‘racism’ & ‘homophobia’ in viral graduation speech

A Kentucky student denounced homophobia and racism during a speech at his 8th-grade graduation. The words rapidly went viral as he left behind the campus he called an oppressive environment.

“Apparently, this school doesn’t know better than to give an angry gay kid a microphone,” Daniel Mattingly said in a short speech at Stuart Academy in Louisville.

The school had asked him to give a speech after his time on the student council. Based on the assignment, he wrote something on dealing with the trauma from the loss of both his parents. His family later shared a draft of that speech, where he discussed coming home to “my mother and father sitting in the living room with a guilty look on their faces. They sat me down and told me that they were both recently diagnosed with cancer.”

His father died of esophageal cancer in 2023, and his mother died of ovarian cancer in 2024.

“When my father died, I was in sixth grade, sitting alone at lunch every single day,” he wrote. “I was getting bullied by the people I called my friends. I missed an ungodly amount of school because of my dad’s death and my mom’s sickness. It wasn’t very different in seventh grade. After my mom died, I was being taken care of by my sister, who taught me to clean around the house, but she was struggling with grief and other personal problems while in an extremely abusive relationship,” he wrote.

He also discussed relationship difficulties and the impact on his mental health in middle school.

“Not having friends took a toll on me. I was close to committing suicide the week my boyfriend, my only friend at the time, broke up with me,” he wrote. “In fact, it still has, since my best friend Eva is the only reason anybody knows my name in this school.”

Daniel said teachers rejected the draft as too negative. He told Kentucky TV station WAVE that he had a version of the speech rejected as late as the morning of graduation before turning in one that met the school’s expectations.

But when he was called up, he went off script.

“I had a speech ready to cheer on and encourage any oppressed youth, which makes up the entirety of this school. I was told by Mr. Dawson and Miss Imes [that] there’s time and a place. My speech is too negative, it’s too controversial,” he said, before putting the campus on blast.

“This school is built on racism, sexism, and homophobia. I encourage everyone here today to stand up for yourself, even if it makes the scene. This school is fucking ridiculous.”

The expletive drew uproarious applause in the school auditorium. As of Tuesday, the original Facebook video had garnered 1.1 million views, five days after it was posted.

Asked by WAVE about the choice, Daniel said teachers had encouraged him to speak from his heart, so he did. He ended up reaching an audience far beyond that in the auditorium.

“I’m on the news, so I’m like, it got where it needed to be," he said.

Daniel’s family set up a GoFundMe for him after the death of his parents.