The “It Gets Better” campaign is one of those brilliant, amazingly simple ideas. When faced with the torment of suicidal thoughts, it is sometimes extraordinarily difficult to see the world for its possibilities.
An article in the New York Times tells of the campaign’s origins:
The “It Gets Better” idea came to Dan Savage, 46, while he was riding the AirTrain shuttle to Kennedy International Airport last month and thinking about Billy Lucas, a 15-year-old from Indiana who committed suicide Sept. 9. The local news media reported that Mr. Lucas was bullied regularly.
Days earlier, Mr. Savage had blogged about the suicide, and a reader had written: “My heart breaks for the pain and torment you went through, Billy Lucas. I wish I could have told you that things get better.”
Mr. Savage said he felt the same way. But how to tell them? He gives talks at colleges regularly, but not at middle schools or high schools. “I would never get permission,” he said, blaming a system of “parents, preachers, and teachers” who “believe they can terrorize gay children out of being gay as they grow up.”
His realization was this: “I was waiting for permission that—in the era of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook—I didn’t need anymore.”
The most popular video features Joel Burns, a Fort Worth city councilman, previously shown on Good Feed.
Mr. Burns’s message to gay teenagers was succinct: “The attitudes of society will change. Please live long enough to be here to see it.”
This project is important because it is reaching out to young LGBT people and telling them that life generally gets better than in middle and high school, especially if they are being bullied for being or perceived to be gay. Close to 90% of gay high school students report being a victim of bullying. The goal here is two-fold: talk them out of harming themselves when the pressure from bullying gets to be too much, as well as affirm them in their sexuality, which society has traditionally reserved its blessings for straight young men. This needs to change.