I expect simple behaviours here. Friendship, and love. Any advice should be from the perspective of the person asking, not the person giving! We have had to make new membership moderated to combat the huge number of spammers who register
Location: US/Canada
Registered: September 2009
Messages: 733
From The Advocate Online's Editors:
Writer Dan Savage is reaching out to LGBT teenagers to let them know life may be difficult now, but "it gets better."
The "It Gets Better" Project is inspired by the suicide of 15-year-old Indiana teenager Billy Lucas, who hanged himself last week in his family's barn after enduring bullying from his classmates. After writing a post on The Slog about Lucas's death last week, one commenter expressed a desire to have spoken to him to tell him that things get better.
Savage, in his September 21 Savage Love podcast, said he felt the same way and decided to address the problem. The project is a YouTube channel where LGBT adults can upload videos targeted at gay teens to let then know their future can still be bright.
The first video, posted Tuesday morning, features Savage and his husband talking about growing up as gay teenagers.
Location: Canada
Registered: December 2003
Messages: 869
For the second time only, I have actually subscribed to a channel at YouTube; the other being earlier this year when I joined the "We Give A Damn" project.
My own channel is no longer quite as bleak as it once was when first I opened it.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
Location: Worcester, England
Registered: January 2005
Messages: 1560
What an inspiring video clip, and what a lovely couple!
As well as all the practical support (phone lines, help for runaways and survivors of physical and emotional abuse, information and practical skills and so forth), this is what so many teenagers need to hear. It DOES get better - in fact, it gets excellent!
It's desperately sad that kids need to access such positive and life-affirming stories on line, rather than having gay couples as part of their parents and their own social network while growing up. But - looking back - it made a massive difference to me at age 22 when a gay couple moved in next door to my mother, and became good friends of hers. They were the role models that eventually made me decide that I should come out.
I'll follow the channel, and hope that there are many contributions: it strikes me as potentially an incredibly valuable way of bolstering self-esteem and a sense of self-worth among some of the most vulnerable gay kids, and a much-needed antidote to the bad news stories that are so common, and which can contribute to a feeling of hopelessness and lack of a worthwhile future.
Like so many of us, I've experienced despair when I simply wasn't the answer, or not enough of the answer, and a gay teenager took his own life despite all I could do to reassure and support. Videos like this are yet another part of the range of things it's great to be able to think might help prevent such tragedies.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
I'm going to create a video for this myself. I just need some quiet time to think it through. All flavours of gay and lifestyle after horrors are relevant. MIne is no different from so many others.
I feel a little scared of doing this. It seems so much easier to reveal myself in print than on a video. Part of it is my need for perfection. I feel I want a video to be broadcast quality. But that isn't the point. The point is that any and all messages are valid, useful.
So why do I feel hesitant?
I was a kid who survived bullying enough to make me seriously think of suicide. I made it through to the other side by luck and by fear of pain and loss.
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
Registered: September 2010
Messages: 127
Some time ago I wrote a story called "The Best Memories Of Their Lives" which incorporated many of my experiences of school bullying, by both teachers and other kids.I also included references to the dysfunctional nature of my home life, though this is more tame than the reality it describes. Certain fictional elements restrain me from claiming it to be a true story.
My writing did not quite reach the quality I was seeking, mainly because it was quite an effort to face the memories which shaped my self esteem or lack thereof. I think I was probably saved by naiveté, both whilst at school, and when I wrote the story. ;-D
Anyhow, here is a link to that story for those interested.
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
It's strange. School reunions are strange. The rest, that was awful, but the reunion, that was like all mine. I wasn't bullied that much, just one severe incident, but the reunions, where they put in airs and graces, I went to those on purpose, and, mostly, because I hated them all.
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
Registered: September 2010
Messages: 127
I never got invited to another reunion from primary school or highschool.
I did meet a woman who remembered me being bullied in primary school when she was a student. She told me that the girls all thought it was horrible how they beat me every lunch hour. Strangely enough I have no malice towards them now, I wouldn't even think of them if it weren't for horrors that still happen to young teens today. That makes me very much an activist, something that doesn't seem to be wanted locally, but they have to put up with me stirring the issues.
It's true these thugs do seem to disappear after the school years, and that makes it easier to discover the joys of life.
There is much work to do and as others have stated, "Darwin's work is never finished."
DesDownunder
Call me naive if you want, but life without trust in the goodness of others would be intolerable.
Religious indoctrination: It gets better, without it.
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Dan Savage Aims to Save LGBT Kids 
