Editorial: Kudos to young adults for staging protest here

It is apparent that civics teachers at Hastings High School are doing their jobs.

That was obvious Tuesday when a group of students and former students stood outside a Hastings business and staged a peaceful protest.

The protest, coordinated by a 19-year-old Hastings man and a 20-year-old Hastings woman, was a wonderful exercise in free speech. The two say that a Hastings business has a strong stance against homosexuality, and they simply wanted to draw attention to that.

Consider their mission accomplished. All day long, people stopped by to talk with the young adults. Many offered words of encouragement for them. As the day wore on, they were joined by more and more friends, who stood tall at a busy intersection, holding up signs expressing their beliefs.

Whether you support same-sex marriage or not isn’t the question here. You’ll have your chance to go to the polls later this year to make your stance on that clear.

Regardless of how you plan to vote, we should all be encouraged that a group of current HHS students and recent HHS graduates are diving right in when it comes to political activism. They feel passionately about a cause, and they are using their right to free speech to get the word out.

Likewise, The Salvation Army certainly has a right to adhere to its faith-based values. Those values are very clearly communicated on their website and can be read in their entirety at www.salvationarmyusa.org.

Tags: opinion, hastings, minnesota, spiral, local, may, editorials