I kno what ure saying man, it is cowardly to lie about it, but for you to be bothered by this, you must give in to the weakness that makes you a coward in the first place, the opinions of others. Whether you shout it from the rooftops, or keep it in secret, the action speaks louder than the words ever could.
And the attitude of "i smoke marijuana, but that doesn't make me less of a person. if you think it does, and you have some prejudice against it, then this friendship, relationship, whatever it is, can't continue." is a long way of saying 'Fuck ya, I'll do what I want' You smoke weed, which is what you want to do, and if others don't like it, you can't be around them, in a harsher sense, but the same general message fuck ya!
As for Ghandi, I think it was amazing what he did, he had as much balls as a fucking barbarian, but even tho his principles were firmly built on non-violent methods, his oppressors weren't, and in the 20 or so years it took for him to gain the independence of India, hundreds of thousands of protestors were either shot/imprisoned/beaten, including himself many times. Plus when the independence was finally gained, it was just after the first world war, when britain was economically butt fucked, but that still didn't stop them from tryin to split India up in to smaller states, with the 1946 cabinet mission to India, which in a way they succeeded in doing, political unrest was invoked in the indian parliament between the different religious groups, ending in turmoil, but on his last fast to death for peace between Hindu, Sikh and Muslim groups, they agreed they would advocate peace............little over a year later Ghandi was assasinated by a Hindu extremist, with the group Mahasabha, who blamed Gandi for weakenin india by paying Pakistan to avoid war, and these religious groups and many more are still having a pissing contest with one another.
So you can hav as positive attitude as you want, but ppl will ALWAYS try and fuck you over and call you a prick for what you do, the best thing is to do what Gandi did once a day every week, and be silent, unless you want to really go balls out on it, and in this case I don't think its worth it to slpntrx5, cuz he'll eventually leave school, and never see 80-95% of those pricks again.