October 1, 2010

It gets better, and help is out there

Posted in Children and adolescents, GLBT issues, Poetry at 4:22 pm by The Lizard Queen

A couple of things I wanted to point to, apropos of my previous post:

First, I want to point to the Trevor Project, which offers a crisis and suicide prevention helpline for LGBT and questioning youth, along with other great resources.  The nationwide, round-the-clock helpline is 1-866-4-U-TREVOR (1-866-488-7386).

Dan Savage recently kicked off a YouTube campaign, the It Gets Better Project.  Here’s what he said when he started it:

Billy Lucas was just 15 when he hanged himself in a barn on his grandmother’s property. He reportedly endured intense bullying at the hands of his classmates—classmates who called him a fag and told him to kill himself. His mother found his body…. I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.

But gay adults aren’t allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don’t bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay—or from ever coming out—by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.

Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don’t have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better. We can reach these kids.

Go check out the videos, and spread the word!

Finally, today, via Good As You, I came across God Loves Poetry, a site that is “challenging the Westboro Baptist Church one blackout poem at a time.”  Basically, folks take WBC press releases and whatnot, and black out most of the words until what’s left is lovely, and loving.  (You can see a photo of the process here.)