The Canadian Press - ONLINE EDITION
Gay community pouring hearts out on YouTube over teen suicides: It gets better
By: Leanne Italie, The Associated Press
8/10/2010 11:35 AM
NEW YORK, N.Y. - David Valdes Greenwood was 15 when he climbed to the highest arch of a bridge in his small Maine town and got ready to jump.
It was 1982. He was distraught over a pastor's Sodom and Gomorrah sermon that his homosexuality would bring God's wrath down on everyone around him. He didn't think his friends, family and fellow churchgoers deserved to suffer because he was gay.
"It had never occurred to me that I would wound people by my simply existing," Greenwood said. "And it seemed kind of true."
So he became that boy on the Sophie May Lane Bridge in Norridgewock. Thankfully, a neighbour walked by and shouted for him to stop fooling around up there — and he listened, then he fled town the first chance he got.
All grown up, married to a man he loves with a five-year-old daughter they adore, the 43-year-old Greenwood hopes gay young people in pain will now listen to him. So do hundreds of others who, like Greenwood, have taken to YouTube to make a promise: If you hang on through the self-doubt, the coming-out years, through the slurs, the isolation at school and being slammed up against the lockers, through the rejection and anger of parents and grandparents, it gets better. A whole lot better.
snip...
Savage, a gay rights activist who also writes books, travels around the U.S. speaking, knows many towns and schools will never invite him. That's one reason he set up the "It Gets Better" channel on YouTube and asked for video stories, starting with himself and his partner, Terry.
In two weeks, the channel has racked up more than a million views, the number of videos has exploded from a handful to 1,000 submitted, comment threads are growing and emails are pouring in from bullied and closeted teens.
"We're totally overwhelmed by the response," Savage said. "The most gratifying are parents sitting down at the computer and watching with their kids. So many kids, they're bullied at school by their peers, they go home to homophobic parents who bully them, and then they're dragged to church on Sunday for more bullying from the pulpit."
more...
http://www.brandonsun.com/lifestyles/breaking-news/gay-community-pouring-hearts-out-on-youtube-over-teen-suicides-it-gets-better-104525464.html?thx=yYouTube "It Gets Better" channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/itgetsbetterproject
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