People have been asking where his It Gets Better video is. Here it is.
Purple tie and everything.
Hey Dan Savage: You’ve created a Good Thing. Thanks.
UPDATE: I’m going to go ahead and repost what Joe Jervis said in his intro to this video, because I’m already seeing The Backlash:
It’s a heartfelt, well-written, and sincerely delivered message. Let’s try to divorce this effort from “the other issue” and talk about what a message like this from the president of the United States might mean to a young queer kid. And once again, let’s thank Dan Savage for what is easily the most successful and widely-heard pro-gay campaign in the history of our movement.
Yes.
I’m glad he finally made a video. I am sure he does know what it is to feel different, though he was not bullied for being LGBT.
I was bullied in grade school. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone about what was going on. Fortunately I did have a family – parents and siblings – who did love me. And fortunately the high schools I went to were very affirming places.
But I still carry some of the scars of that bullying with me despite years of therapy. I think that is one reason I have reacted so strongly to the bullying that led the gay youths whose suicides were in the news recently. I think that is why I am so angry not only at their school bullies, but at the bullies who lead churches (especially the Catholic bishops – I was a Catholic) and the bullies in political office.
Things have gotten much better for me. I am close to seventy and my life is rich with people who love me and whom I love, and the older I get the happier I feel. I am so glad that I never took the option of suicide when I was young. I would have missed all this. And I know I have helped people along the way – people who might not have been helped and loved had I not been in their lives.
A client at a clinic once asked me what the meaning of life was. All I could think to say to him was “I think the meaning of life is life.” I don’t know if there is anything after this life, but I think maybe the meaning of this life is to live and love and be in this world as long as we have the opportunity to experience life in all its beauty and pain, in all its complexity and mystery.
I applaud the president for making this video and if it saves one life it is great. Having said that though as many have pointed out on Joe’s site you can not divorce it from the other issues and here is why.
You have a president who is telling GLBT youth it gets better while at the same time is appealing a court ruling that gay soldiers are somehoe inferior to their peers. And even if you buy the BS he has to appeal it which has been shot down by Ted Olson and proven that other presidents have not appealed certain decisions, the fact that they asked for an emergency injunction speaks volumes. Why the need for the emergency injunction? Did the military blow up in the week that DADT was no longer the law of the land?
We also have to remember this is a president who has appeared at events with people like Donnie McClurkin and Rick Warren people who believe in the very thing that this website is fighting. It is clear that the president wants it both ways. He has merely given lip service and has relegated us to 2nd class citizenship thus indirectly contributing to the strife that gay teens face. That’s why many of us are angry and insulted.
Already? LOL. It started the minute the video was posted. BUT STILL, I live in a state where one of our gubernatorial candidates (Nikki Haley) won’t even say the word “gay” when talking about bullying. So I’m glad the President stepped up. Yes, he needs to handle his business with the other stuff, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that an lgbt child could see this very moving show of support.