Dan Savage is an American syndicated columnist, best known for his column "Savage Love". I stumbled across an article on a "project" that he and his partner started back in September 2010 in response to the growing number of gay teen suicides resulting from bullying in school - the "It Gets Better Project". The whole thing got started when they posted a YouTube video. The project has grown from there and the rest, as they say, is history. Their message of hope for young people is important and bears repeating wherever and whenever possible. As such, the following are excerpts from the "It Gets Better Project" website.
An Excerpt from ... http://www.itgetsbetter.org/pages/about-it-gets-better-project/:
Growing up isn’t easy. Many young people face daily tormenting and bullying, leading them to feel like they have nowhere to turn. This is especially true for LGBT kids and teens, who often hide their sexuality for fear of bullying. Without other openly gay adults and mentors in their lives, they can't imagine what their future may hold. In many instances, gay and lesbian adolescents are taunted — even tortured — simply for being themselves.
While many of these teens couldn’t see a positive future for themselves, we can. The It Gets Better Project was created to show young LGBT people the levels of happiness, potential, and positivity their lives will reach – if they can just get through their teen years. The It Gets Better Project wants to remind teenagers in the LGBT community that they are not alone — and it WILL get better.
What is the It Gets Better Project?
In September 2010, syndicated columnist and author Dan Savage created a YouTube video with his partner Terry Miller to inspire hope for young people facing harassment. In response to a number of students taking their own lives after being bullied in school, they wanted to create a personal way for supporters everywhere to tell LGBT youth that, yes, it does indeed get better.
More than a year later, the It Gets Better Project™ has turned into a worldwide movement, inspiring more than 30,000 user-created videos viewed more than 40 million times. To date, the project has received submissions from celebrities, organizations, activists, politicians and media personalities, including President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Adam Lambert, Anne Hathaway, Colin Farrell, Matthew Morrison of "Glee", Joe Jonas, Joel Madden, Ke$ha, Sarah Silverman, Tim Gunn, Ellen DeGeneres, Suze Orman, the staffs of The Gap, Google, Facebook, Pixar, the Broadway community, and many more. For us, every video changes a life. It doesn’t matter who makes it.
ItGetsBetter.org is a place where young people who are lesbian, gay, bi, or trans can see how love and happiness can be a reality in their future. It’s a place where our straight allies can visit and support their friends and family members. It’s a place where people can share their stories, take the It Gets Better Project pledge and watch videos of love and support.
On March 22, 2011, six months following the launch of the project, the It Gets Better Project book was released. The book , It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living is on-sale wherever books are sold. It includes essays and new material from more than 100 contributors, including celebrities, religious leaders, politicians, parents, educators, youth just out of high school, and many more. For more details and to purchase the book, visit http://itgetsbetter.org/book.
Terry Miller & Dan Savage
An Excerpt ... Dan Savage:
"I wish I could've told him that it gets better." ...
That was our reaction earlier this summer after hearing of the suicide of Justin Aaberg, a victim of anti-gay bullying in Minnesota. And our reaction a few weeks ago when we read about the suicide of Billy Lucas, a victim of anti-gay bullying in Indiana. Terry and I were both bullied in middle and high school. As adults, we now know what too many young, isolated, bullied LGBT kids do not: it gets better. Life gets better, and one day you find happiness.
But homophobic school administrators, parents, and preachers would never invite us, or any LGBT adults, to speak to gay kids who are being bullied. And then it occurred to us: we didn't need an invitation. We could record a video and speak directly to LGBT kids about surviving bullying and going on to lead rewarding lives filled with joy, family, and love. We didn't need anyone's permission to tell them — it gets better.
We posted our YouTube video on September 21, 2010. By the next day we had received a dozen videos from LGBT adults sharing their stories of survival and success. By the end of the week we had more than 200. Soon we were overwhelmed — and not just with videos from LGBT adults. Emails were pouring in from LGBT teenagers all over the country telling us that the videos were working. Most heartbreakingly of all, the mothers and fathers of bullied LGBT kids were watching the videos with their children and submitting their own. The "It Gets Better Project" had struck a chord.
LGBT adults have long felt helpless as we watched LGBT youth be bullied in schools. We knew that while bullied straight kids go home to sympathetic parents and a shoulder to cry on, bullied gay kids all too often go home to more bullying from their parents and their churches. We despaired as we read about gay teens taking their own lives, and didn’t know how to reach out to these kids — fearing our motives would be questioned if we did.
All of that has changed with the IGBP. This site is a place where LGBT adults can share the stories of their lives with LGBT youth. It's a place where young people who are gay, lesbian, bi, or trans can see with their own eyes that love and happiness and reconciliation with their families are possibilities for them, too. It's a place where our straight allies can add their names in solidarity and help spread our message of hope. We can reach out, we can deliver messages of hope, and we can make a difference.
The videos on this site do not solve the problem of anti-gay bullying. We need to work on getting safe schools legislation passed in every state; we need to push for anti-bullying programs; we need to hold negligent school administrators accountable; and we need to confront the bigots and demagogues who inject hate into the national conversation about LGBT people and give straight children license to abuse and bully LGBT kids. All of that will take years of dedicated activism.
In the meantime we can reach out, right now, to LGBT kids who are suffering and deliver messages of hope. We can offer them practical advice about how to survive what are often the toughest years for LGBT people, and we can share our lives as LGBT adults with them. We can be role models and we can be mentors. Our goal is to create an archive of videos that speak to LGBT youth from all walks of life, from all faiths, and in every part of the country.
=================================================
JOIN THE MOVEMENT - TAKE THE PLEDGE:
Everyone deserves to be respected for who they are. I pledge to spread this message to my friends, family and neighbors. I'll speak up against hate and intolerance whenever I see it, at school and at work. I'll provide hope for lesbian, gay, bi, trans and other bullied teens by letting them know that "It Gets Better."
