A 17-year-old girl from Kentucky has won the prestigious John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest with her essay praising Vermont Governor Howard Dean's refusal to back away from his state's enactment of the first-in-the-nation civil unions law for gays and lesbians despite a political onslaught, it was announced May 11.

Stephanie Dziczek from Holmes High School in Covington, Ky., will be honored by Caroline Kennedy and other members of the Kennedy family at a May 21 ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. At that ceremony the young essayist will also be presented with a $3,000 first-prize award.

Dziczek's essay, which begins by recalling that ``Americans have rewritten the Declaration of Independence a thousand times since it was signed in 1776," notes that, as a nation, we ``have awarded women suffrage, presented African Americans with equal opportunities and granted homosexuals the right to join in civil unions."

She then delivers a brief retelling of Gov. Dean's history as Vermont's chief executive, recounting the many successes he has enjoyed -- including that Dean ``made Vermont the forerunner in welfare and health care reform and made it first, nationally, in childhood immunizations." A popular governor, Dziczek adds that Dean was easily re-elected with 70 percent of the vote.

But those victories were overshadowed by the controversies that nearly cost Dean his job after he signed the civil-unions legislation on April 26, 2000.

``In his campaign for re-election to a fifth gubernatorial term, an ambitious Dean would have focused on health care, taxes, or any of a number of `safe' political platforms," Dziczek notes in her essay. ``However, disturbed by Vermont's reaction toward gay civil unions, Dean made the `extension of the rights and benefits of the [Vermont] constitution to all Vermonters, regardless of their sexual orientation' the heart of his campaign for acceptance and understanding. Over the next six months, Dean fought harder for open-mindedness than for votes. He spoke against the [anti-gay] `Take Back Vermont' movement, his most serious Election Day threat, stating that he never wanted to take Vermont back to `a time when it was okay to discriminate against people.' Dean effectively avoided the homophobic trends in political campaigning, but burdened himself with the political plague in popularity polls." Dean won the election, of course, but not without nearly draining his political capital with many voters, some of whom remain angry to this day. But the civil-unions law is intact, and Dean's example inspired to Dziczek to pen her essay. ``The effect of Dean's courage, however, reaches beyond the law," Dziczek points out. ``For a generation of young Americans, Dean proved that justice is possible and that rights to `life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' are still worth defending."

Dziczek will share her first-place honor with Tyler Boersen, an 18-year-old senior at Haslett High School in Haslett, Mich., who wrote about Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak, a Republican member of the National Rifle Association (NRA) who normally votes against most gun-control legislation -- that is, until House Republicans tried to kill the 72-hour background check for gun purchases approved in the wake of the Columbine shootings. Stupak voted to keep the waiting period despite that it might cost him many votes if the NRA decides to target him for what Boersen sees as a principled stand.

``The John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest is designed to help high school students appreciate the importance of public service and the difficult choices that politicians often face," said John Shattuck, Chief Executive Officer of the Kennedy Library and Foundation. ``Democracy faces enough challenges today without saddling our youth with doubt and cynicism about their elected leaders. Stephanie Dziczek and Tyler Boersen are to be congratulated for understanding why President Kennedy most admired those politicians who have the courage to make decisions of conscience without regard for the consequences."

This is the first year that the first-place spot has been awarded to two individuals, with each receiving $3,000. The award is presented by the Kennedy Library Foundation (KLF). This year's winners were chosen from 1,176 submissions by high school students across the country.

What is also notable about the essays is that the bipartisan panel of judges for the contest included two Republicans: Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. Both senators were joined on the judging panel by presidential historian David McCullough; U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.; John Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment Center; David Burke, former president of CBS News; Paul G. Kirk, Jr., chairman of the board of directors of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation; Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund; Antonia Hernandez, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund; Elaine Jones, director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; and Caroline Kennedy, president of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.

The same judging panel chose former President Gerald Ford to receive the 2001 Profile in Courage Award for his taking the country post-Watergate out of what Ford described at the time as ``our long national nightmare" -- and for pardoning Richard Nixon despite political winds at the time that said that was a mistake.

In addition, Congressman John Lewis, D-Ga., will receive a special Profile in Courage Award for Lifetime Achievement. According to KLF officials, ``the special award presentation to Lewis marks the 40th anniversary of the 1961 Freedom Rides for which John Lewis risked his life and was beaten severely by mobs for challenging segregation at interstate bus terminals across the South."

Lewis has been also been a steadfast supporter of gay rights on Capitol Hill and in his very conservative home state.

The Profiles in Courage Awards were created in 1989 -- and named after President Kennedy's book ``Profiles in Courage" -- to honor Kennedy's ``commitment and contribution to public service," the KLF notes. The awards are presented each year on or near May 29, Kennedy's birth date.

Past winners of the Profile in Courage Award include Sens. John McCain and Russell Feingold, a Republican and Democrat respectively, who took on -- and are still taking on -- the way their parties finance campaigns; and the eight Irish leaders who brokered the historic peace accord in Northern Ireland.

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