00:00The next question comes from Zachary, age 9, and this is a really touching question.
00:08He says, thank you for being so brave.
00:11Would you help me tell the world I'm gay too?
00:14I want to be brave like you.
00:18Wow.
00:20Well, Zachary, if you're here and you want to give a wave, let me know.
00:30Hey.
00:31All right.
00:44Thank you very much.
00:45This is for me?
00:47Did you make it?
00:49Zachary just gave me something he made.
00:51I'm going to be wearing it tonight.
00:52Thanks very much for that.
00:59Well, I don't think you need a lot of advice from me on bravery.
01:04You seem pretty strong.
01:07To see you, it took me a long time to figure out how to tell even my best friend that I was gay,
01:15let alone to go out there and tell the world.
01:18And to see you willing to come to terms with who you are in a room full of a thousand people,
01:25thousands of people you've never met, that's really something.
01:28So let me tell you a couple things that might be useful.
01:35The first thing is that it won't always be easy, but that's okay because you know who you are.
01:43And that's really important because when you know who you are,
01:48you have a center of gravity that can hold you together when all kinds of chaos is happening around you.
01:56Okay, that's the first thing I want you to know.
01:59The second thing I want you to know is that you'll never know who's taking their lead from you,
02:07who's watching you and deciding that they can be a little braver because you have been brave.
02:17When I was trying to figure out who I was, I was afraid that who I was might mean that I could never make a difference.
02:25And what wound up happening instead is that it's a huge part of the difference I get to make.
02:31I never could have seen that coming.
02:32And you'll never know whose life you might be affecting right now, just by standing here, right now.
02:38There's a lot of power in that.
02:44And the last thing I want you to know is even if I can't promise it'll always be easy,
02:49I can promise you that I'm going to be rooting for you.
02:52And I think there's a whole bunch of people here who are going to be rooting for you every step of the way.
