A new series of YouTube videos lets gay and lesbian teens know:
"It gets better."
This story was originally reported by PRI's The Takeaway.
After a recent spate of suicides by gay and lesbian teens, Dan Savage felt like he had to do something. Savage has heard innumerable stories about the problems of faced by gay and lesbian teens as author of the sex column Savage Love and as editorial director of The Stranger alt-weekly. He told PRI's The Takeaway that whenever he hears about a gay or lesbian teen who has committed suicide, he thinks "I wish I could have talked to that kid for five minutes, and been able to tell him that it gets better."
Eventually, he realized "I would never get permission to talk to these kids, I would never get an invitation from a school run by homophobes or from parents." At the same time, he says, "it occurred to me that I didn't need anyone's permission anymore to talk to these kids."
Savage's boyfriend was once brutally bullied as a child. So the two of them went on YouTube and uploaded a video with a simple message: "We were bullied too. We get it. We understand what it's like, and it gets better."
Read/listen:
Sexual orientation - INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA - “Auschwitz – Benedict XVI - Christmas 2008 -A flashback far more severe than in Brokeback Mountain” GAY TEENAGE SUICIDE - Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
No Antigay Religious Norms - Gay Children Not Harmed,
Fr. Marty Kurylowicz, Thalamus Center
No comments:
Post a Comment