What a fantastic message — not just for despairing gay teens, but teens in general. Growing up is so awesome because you can do whatever is right for you. Very little outside your own tiny existence really matters.
Here’s an excerpt from the Savage Love column that announced the birth of the It Gets Better Project (italics are original; bold added for emphasis on the thematically appropriate issue).
Nine out of 10 gay teenagers experience bullying and harassment at school, and gay teens are four times likelier to attempt suicide. Many LGBT kids who do kill themselves live in rural areas, exurbs, and suburban areas, places with no gay organizations or services for queer kids.
“My heart breaks for the pain and torment you went through, Billy Lucas,” a reader wrote after I posted about Billy Lucas [who recently hung himself] to my blog. “I wish I could have told you that things get better.”
I had the same reaction: I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.
But gay adults aren’t allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don’t bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay—or from ever coming out—by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.
Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don’t have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better. We can reach these kids.
[...] [M]any LGBT youth can’t picture what their lives might be like as openly gay adults. They can’t imagine a future for themselves. So let’s show them what our lives are like, let’s show them what the future may hold in store for them.
I wasn’t miserable in high school but I felt very trapped. It wasn’t cool to study hard around the jocks and being a jock wasn’t very admired by the honors kids. In retrospect and with additional information garnered over eight more years, I realize there were some great people there who I should have spent more time with, but 15 year-old me didn’t see it. What’s most important, though, is that high school plays almost no role in the life I have now (“almost” because I chose to live only an hour away). I know from Facebook that some of the people who gave me a hard time back in high school got what they had coming in one way or another but it’s not even worth the energy to care. College wasn’t perfect but its scale makes popularity contests impossible unless you specifically opt in. And of course, college provides you the opportunity to select an environment that matches your identity more closely than the random thousand+ kids who live in closest proximity to where your parents chose to make a home.
Filed under: Gender & Sexuality, Social Movements Tagged: | Billy Lucas, Dan Savage, high school, It Gets Better, Savage Love
