This picture of a boy standing up to bigots at a homophobic protest in Mexico is simply stunning

On Saturday afternoon, thousands of people took to the streets in cities across Mexico to protest a proposed amendment to the country’s constitution from President Enrique Peña Nieto which would legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. One little boy decided to stand up to them.

The protests were largely organized by the National Front for the Family, a coalition of thousands of smaller conservative organizations arguing that gay marriage is an affront to traditional family values.

“It seems to us the height of authoritarianism for the government to seek to supplant parental authority,” the organization wrote in an open letter to Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party earlier this year. “We want to emphasize that there is no right of adults to have children; the right is of minors to have a father and a mother. It is the superior interest of the minor that should prevail and not the ideological fashion embraced by the current government.”

While there were unimpeded marches in Chihuahua,  Coahuila, and Jalisco, the protest in the city of Celaya was briefly interrupted when a 12-year-old boy stepped in front of the procession in an attempt to turn the protestors back.

Speaking to Regeneración, photo journalist Manuel Rodríguez explained that at first he assumed that the kid was playing in the street, but he soon realized that he was witnessing a one-person counter protest. The boy stood alone in front of at least 10,000 anti-LGBT protestors with his arms out stretched, he later told Rodríguez, to stand up for his gay uncle.

“I have an uncle who is gay,” the boy told  Rodríguez when asked why he stood in the street. “And I hate people that hate.”