Miley Cyrus has been doing some pretty awesome things lately that deserve to be shared much more than memes of her dancing with a foam finger. She’s launched a foundation to help homeless LGBT youth in America, and is promoting it by appearing on the cover of Paper Mag‘s summer issue, naked save for a smattering of mud, with key parts hidden by her pet pig, Bubba Sue.

“When you have all eyes on you, what are you saying? And that’s what I had to ask myself a lot,” she said to the Associated Press.

“It’s like, I know you’re going to look at me more if my breasts are out, so look at me,” she explained. “And then I’m going to tell you about my foundation for an hour and totally hustle you.”

Eff yes, Cyrus! You’re getting it! You’re totally getting it! (Kardash-Jenners: Do you see?)

The cause for the foundation is important to Cyrus because she, herself, is bisexual, and was particularly affected by the news of the suicide-death of trans teen Leelah Alcorn. “All humans have valid feelings and rights,” Cyrus said. “I want to use my voice as a megaphone to young people everywhere and encourage human evolution.”

Miley described her mother having a hard time initially understanding when her daughter, 14 at the time, confided that she felt the same way about girls as she did boys. “She didn’t want me to be judged and she didn’t want me to go to hell,” Miley said of her mom’s reaction, “but she believes in me more than she believes in any god.”

To me, this was a beautiful sentiment to read and it stopped me in my tracks. I grew up in an Irish Catholic family and attended 12 years of Catholic school. All that time, I was taught conflicting ideas: according to a textbook, I should love and accept others as I want to be loved and accepted. ALL human life is valuable. There is NO sin so terrible that God won’t forgive it.

But according to what I was taught indirectly, through action and omission, the textbook guidelines seemed to fall by the wayside.

The religious authority and “godly” people (I loathe that as an adjective, btw) around me who I was commanded to respect and heed, had little ways of weaving their personal opinions—what their parents and teachers and years of a prejudiced system had taught them—into their everyday routines. And we’re all aware by now of how perceptive kids are. The things you do inform their brains just as much as, if not more than, the things you say.

“Forgive us our trespasses,” we’d recite together in our daily prayers. Our faith taught us that God will forgive us, but anyone with authority won’t, or at least doesn’t have to. Your trespasses are punishable first, forgivable second.

I wasn’t told not to be gay, but I wasn’t told that being gay was OK. I was taught that tired, tired, tired line of “Marriage is between a man and a woman.” It didn’t take us long to deduce that, to our parents and teachers, two boys kissing was not allowed. One of the first things we learned in elementary school was that there are consequences for breaking the rules—even the unspoken ones. Your actions are immediately punishable. Rule-breakers had to be taught a lesson, had to learn not to “trespass” again.

When a boy seemed effeminate, we beat him up with our words and our fists. We called husky girls lesbians as though it was a clever insult.

In pre-school, I once peed the mat during nap time and was put in Time Out because of it. My involuntary actions got me punished. Anyone I tell that story to either thinks I made it up, did something else to deserve it (victim-blaming a 4 year old? really?), or they acknowledge that the teacher was wrong and the punishment unnecessary.

How is punishing someone for being gay, or transgender, or black, or poor, any different from my being punished for wetting the bed?

I don’t want to raise kids in a system, educational or otherwise, where teaching the immediate and complete acceptance of everyone is omitted, while the encouraged norm is to inflict punishment on certain people for the natural, human traits they are born with (ie. brown skin, a bed-wetting problem, has a penis but feels like a woman). We don’t learn how to do any of those things. We are only taught how to disagree with them.

Catholic schools are not the only culprits. The same goes for public schools, parents, the prison system, law enforcement…

Part of the Happy Hippie manifesto reads: “We will challenge each other and the world & will stop pointless judgment.”

New York was my challenge. I read a lot of books. I thought a lot. I witnessed, conversed, asked questions. When my beliefs were challenged, I didn’t blindly stick by them, and I didn’t sheepishly cave. I asked more questions and I researched. I came to my own conclusions.

People are afraid of change and like to stick with tradition. I get that. When my life suddenly and drastically changed around 22, all tradition was chucked out the window. The fact that it didn’t kill me allowed me to slowly realize how freeing that was.

Approaching the world from the point of view of a textbook based on 2,000-year-old ideas is a surefire way to miss out on some of the incredible beauty of this earth and the humans that walk it.

Which is why I feel strongly about sharing and supporting things like the Happy Hippie Foundation.

If you told me two years ago that the opinions of Miley Cyrus would eventually prompt a short essay from me on how her beliefs and mine are highly relatable, I’d have questioned you big time. But props to the both of us for not backing down from change or a challenge.

Delaney Gibbons

Delaney Gibbons is a writer, illustrator, and designer based in NYC, by way of Philadelphia. She’s also a poet, dog lover, sunset chaser, and Friends trivia champion. Earning her B.F.A. in Illustration from Parsons The New School for Design, and her B.A. in Creative Writing from Eugene Lang College, Delaney has experience working in publishing, advertising, marketing, and with niches like eBooks and eZines.

Delaney currently works in book publishing as a marketing designer by day, and is a drawing poet journalist by night. She likes to talk about real life, with compassion and humor and gentleness, while being totally honest.

Connect with Delaney… www.gibbey.com, www.delaneygibbons.com, Twitter