Jacob Rudolph: Gay High School Student From New Jersey Comes Out During Award Speech

Jacob Rudolph picked quite a time to come out to his high school classmates, and video of the teenager’s incredible speech has gone viral on the internet.

The New Jersey high school student was on stage last week to accept an award before his entire class, as well as parents and teachers. The senior from Parsippany decided that after being named Class Actor, he would come clean to the crowd about acting he had done outside of the stage, Towleroad reports.

“Sure, I’ve been in a few plays and musicals, but more importantly, I’ve been acting every single day of my life,” Jacob Rudolph tells the crowd. “You see, I’ve been acting as someone I’m not … you see me acting the part of straight Jacob, when I am in fact LGBT.”

Jacob Rudolph appeared confident and unfazed in his coming out speech, and concluded by saying, “So take me, leave me or move me out of the way, because I am what I am, and that’s how I’m going to act from now on.”

It appears he got a good reaction from the coming out speech, The Huffington Post noted. After he finished, his classmates gave him a thunderous ovation.

It wasn’t just his classmates that appreciated Jacob Rudolph’s coming out speech. It was his own dad, Jonathan, who uploaded the original video. Jonathan described his son’s decision as”taking more guts than anything I’ve ever attempted in my life.”

Here is the video of Jacob Rudolph coming out to his entire high school class: