I think the reason you took some grief for your post is that you strongly imply that these students are getting admitted and/or receiving scholarships mostly because of their status as minorities, LGBT, etc. You do not know that to be true at all. You especially mischaracterized the Tulane situation. As @collegebobollege astutely pointed out, the award he received (the DHS) was one of 75 given for full tuition plus fees from Tulane. A small error in the post is that there are 50 additional full tuition scholarships given by Tulane, not 100 (the PTA is the other award). And a small technicality, neither the DHS not the PTA are the highest scholarships at Tulane, which is how you characterized it. Tulane gives 5 Stamps and 2 Hainkels (the latter Louisiana residents only) which are chosen from the 75 DHS winners. These are full ride scholarships with additional stipends. So in total Tulane gives 68 + 50 = 123 full tuition awards, plus about another 10 for international students only (Global Scholarship). That’s a very different picture than you made it out to be.
As far as the recognition as compared to other DHS recipients, that is because there were write-ups in his local paper about it. http://www.sunherald.com/news/local/education/article62564552.html That is the job of local papers, to highlight local things that are newsworthy. And despite the impressive gains by the LGBT community in the last decade, IMO such a story remains newsworthy as compared to someone winning the award for excellent but less brave projects. A high school student that is known by his fellow students to not only be gay but to perform in drag on a regular basis? That cannot be without risk, I don’t care where you go to high school. But more to the point, you completely neglect that this student has stats that put him in the top 1-2% in the country, as all the winners of these awards must be to qualify. Only about half or a little less end up at Tulane because they also get accepted to HYPS, etc. and sometimes choose those schools and/or win similar scholarships at other top schools. Your diminishing of this student by focusing on his sexual identity and completely ignoring the possibility and reality of his academic prowess naturally led others to cry “foul”.
Just wanted to clear that up, and I think you should look at your post that started this as objectively as you can and think about how it came across.