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GROUP 5: It Gets Better Project

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Social Media as activism to give hope and prevent suicide

It Gets Better Project. It Gets Better Project | Give hope to LGBT youth. ‘It Gets Better’ Offers Hope and Help to Gay Youth. Homophobia was rampant. Bullies were “pretty relentless,” he says, recalling that on his first day there, a girl walked up to him and asked, “Are you a faggot? No offense.” Eventually his parents pulled him out of the school. Looking directly at the camera, Mr. Stowell, now 22, then says three words that he wants isolated gay, lesbian and transgender teenagers to hear: “It got better.” Thousands of people like Mr. The highly personal videos have caused some teenagers to ask for help. “Growing up, I never had someone to confide in,” he said. Mr. The videos are “a new way of using the technology at hand to save lives,” said Stephen Sprinkle, a professor at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, who posted a video to YouTube about the loneliness he felt before identifying as gay.

Some say the videos also represent an important moment for the gay rights movement. The “It Gets Better” videos are different, he said, because they are both more public and more positive. Days earlier, Mr. Mr. Mr. Dan Savage Explains Why He Started ‘It Gets Better’ Project. By James Montgomery 9/30/2010 Last Thursday, in his syndicated sex-advice column “Savage Love,” Dan Savage wrote about the case of Billy Lucas, a 15-year-old high school student in Indiana who committed suicide after being taunted by his classmates for being gay. In the column — titled “Give ‘Em Hope,” from a quote by openly gay politician Harvey Milk — Savage, himself an openly gay man, lamented that he couldn’t have sat down with Lucas, even for five minutes, and told him “however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.”

But then he realized that, while it was too late to talk to Billy Lucas, it wasn’t too late to talk to the millions of kids just like him. So, right then and there, he and his husband decided to do just that. They sat down in front of a camera and told their stories about their horrific high school experiences and, more importantly, how they both survived, thrived and have gone on to live happy, healthy, joyful lives.

Does 'It Gets Better' Make Life Better for Gay Teens? At first glance, it seems impossible that any reasonable person could have a problem with the It Gets Better project. The outreach campaign, started by writer Dan Savage, is a wonderful thing; it's a series of brief, personal messages for GLBT teens who are considering suicide, assuring them that life is worth living. Because it's on the Internet, anyone can access these messages, or upload one; because it's associated with several well-known names (actress Anne Hathaway, singer Ke$ha, and Project Runway's Tim Gunn, to name a few) it's likely to get attention and reach more teens in crisis.

Can telling teens who are considering suicide that "it gets better" actually help them deal with their present realities? In some cases, yes. Even the possibility of a better future can be enough to get some people through the day. "There is actually no path to change in this vision," alleges blogger Rebecca Novack, in a post from her personal blog which was re-published at Queerwatch. Of course.