In response to a series of teen suicides in 2010, famed sex
and relationship advice columnist Dan Savage and his husband, Terry Miller, put
together this collection of open letters to LGBTQ+ teens to let them know that
life really does get better after high school and to inspire them and give them
courage to stick around, even in the face of bullying, and discover that for themselves.
After years of bullying,
15-year-old Justin Aalberg hanged himself in his bedroom in the summer of 2010. His suicide was
followed by that of Billy Lucas, and others followed them. Dan Savage,
a longtime advocate for queer rights, was painfully aware of these
deaths and wished he could speak directly to young people being bullied
everywhere, to let them know that it gets better if they can just manage to stick
around long enough.
Then it occurred to him that in the age of the Internet,
he could speak directly to teens. He and his husband, Terry Miller,
put together a video talking about that and posted it on YouTube, hoping to
inspire perhaps 100 other queer adults to do the same.
Their video went way beyond viral.
Their video went way beyond viral.
As of December 2011, over 10,000 people had made videos for
the project: teens and adults in towns and cities across the world; celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres; and even President Obama. The book is a
compilation of hundreds of these open letters: some transcriptions of the
videos, some essays that have grown out of the videos, and some original
material. The book also includes resources for queer youth and their parents,
educators, and anybody who cares about them.
These are amazing stories, as individual as the people who
wrote them. Each one is a celebration of life and a heartfelt plea to kids who
are being bullied today to stick around long enough to learn for themselves
that it does, in fact, get better.
Exception: some of the pieces, such as the one by President Obama, though they may be sincere, come across as overly polished and somewhat self-serving. The letters written by actual members of the LGBTQ+ community ring much more true and will mean more to LGBTQ+ kids. Nonetheless, it’s important for kids who are being bullied for their sexuality to read the other letters too. Because if the President of the United States thinks what these kids are going through is important enough for him to be talking about, well… maybe it does get better.
Exception: some of the pieces, such as the one by President Obama, though they may be sincere, come across as overly polished and somewhat self-serving. The letters written by actual members of the LGBTQ+ community ring much more true and will mean more to LGBTQ+ kids. Nonetheless, it’s important for kids who are being bullied for their sexuality to read the other letters too. Because if the President of the United States thinks what these kids are going through is important enough for him to be talking about, well… maybe it does get better.
[Note from the present: Um, yeah. Let's just put a pin in
that one. -MN, July 2018]
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