When Pine View School’s valedictory list rolled out in May 2022, class president Zander Moricz already knew his speech was on a shorter leash than most. Administrators had warned the openly gay senior: mention LGBTQ rights and the mic would go dead. With Florida’s freshly signed “Don’t Say Gay” law looming over the ceremony, Moricz packed a spare plan—and a bottle of anti-frizz gel.

Standing at the podium in Sarasota, he never uttered the forbidden word. Instead, he spoke about his lifelong battle with “curly hair.” How hiding that curl under hats felt suffocating, how coming to Pine View let him drop the disguise, and how new policies now threatened to shove the curls back into hiding. The metaphor landed like thunder. Parents exchanged knowing looks, seniors cheered, and administrators sat powerless: to cut the feed would mean confessing the subtext they insisted didn’t belong at graduation.

Moricz’s quiet rebellion ricocheted beyond the football field within hours. Phone-filmed clips hit TikTok’s For You page, CNN picked up the story by nightfall, and hashtags #SayGayAnyway and #CurlyHair trended across Twitter. The teen leaned in, giving interviews about queer visibility, filing a federal lawsuit with other students against the legislation, and turning his grad-cap tassel into a rainbow hair-tie for good measure.

The viral flash never pulled him off mission. He launched the Social Equity through Education Alliance (SEE) to connect Florida students with legal resources, organized voter-registration drives framed as “hair-care tutorials,” and crowdsourced funds for teachers whose classroom Pride flags had been ordered down.

Asked if he regrets swapping a safe speech for a coded protest, Moricz shrugs: “High school taught me algebra and AP Lit, but mostly it taught me how a microphone works. You keep talking until someone hears you.” Curly or straight, his words prove volume isn’t measured in decibels—it’s measured in courage.