Gay politician (and YouTube sensation) headed to Atlanta to support documentary on LGBT elected officials
The San Francisco 49ers have released the first-ever “It Gets Better” video by a NFL team over the weekend. A handful of the team's players are featured, including defensive tackles Ricky Jean Francois and Isaac Sopoaga and safety Donte Whitner.
The video was the response to a petition started by San Francisco-native Sean Chapin.
Chapin also started a successful petition calling on Major League Baseball's Giants to release their own “It Gets Better” video in 2011.
MTV will air an hour-long documentary tomorrow night, Feb. 21, on the “It Gets Better Project” at 11 p.m. The documentary will also be simultaneously broadcast on Logo.
"The lives of these three young people will resonate with millions of teens—gay and straight—who are being bullied for simply being themselves,” said project founder Dan Savage in an official statement. "It's so important they know that things get better and that living openly and honestly and being who you are makes it better. They have so many great moments ahead of them and they will do things they never thought possible—so long as they keep fighting, stay positive, and stay with us."
Created by columnist Savage and his partner Terry Miller in Sept. 2010 after a rash of teenage suicides of LGBT youth because of bullying, the “It Gets Better Project” has grown to now feature thousands of videotaped personal stories from LGBT people reminding bullied youth that they are not alone in their struggles.
Elizabeth Warren might just be the poster child for liberal politicians this fall, and lucky for LGBT rights advocates, she’s on our side.
The wave of national attention gained from Warren’s bitter battle over her position at the Obama Administration's Bureau of Consumer Protection propelled her into public light. Warren has focused the attention into a bid for the U.S. Senate, and plans to run against Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) this fall. So far, polls have her favorably positioned against the incumbent.
Since her the announcement of her Senate bid, Warren has been the “it” candidate in the Democratic party.
Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor, is known mainly as a consumer advocate. She is also a gay rights advocate. No, not the “I have a personal objection to same-sex marriage,” kind of advocate. She's a full-on, support-us-until-we-win advocate.
A group of soldiers serving in Afghanistan are lending their voices to the “It Gets Better” project, a viral movement meant to reach out to bullied queer youth.
“It's hard being different when you're young and even when you're old. But once you realize that you have friends that are going to accept you for who you are, and the sooner the accept yourself for who you are, the sooner you'll realize that life gets better,” one female soldier says in the video.
A year ago, these soldiers could have been discharged under the military's “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy. The discriminatory law was officially overturned on Sept. 20, 2011. Some 13,000 soldiers were discharged due to their sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation before the law was repealed.
Homosexuality, like drugs and cigarettes, harms young people that experiment with it. Well, that's what right-wing activist Rich Swier from Tea Party Nation thinks, anyway.
Earlier this week, Swier posted a blog on Tea Party Nation, an online collective of conservatives and Tea Party members, where he claimed that harassing youth because of their sexuality, or perceived sexuality, was not actually bullying, it was “peer pressure” and “healthy.”
According to Right Wing Watch, Swier equates sexuality with smoking and drug use in an argument to justify bullying LGBT youth.
The Chicago Cubs became the latest Major League Baseball team to launch a video for the “It Gets Better” campaign. The video, released today, features the team's manager Mike Quade, first base coach Bob Drenier, pitcher Ryan Dempster, outfielder Marlon Byrd and others.
See the video below:
‘Lady Gaga is an active promoter of the LGTB community; a community we foster. As previously underscored by [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton, gay and human rights are one and the same. I am proud that an Italian-American artist is coming to Rome. We look to the event with interest.”
— David Thorne, U.S. Ambassador to Rome, on news that Lady Gaga will perform June 11 at EuroPride, the continent’s largest LGBT pride event. (Agenzia Giornalistica Italia, June 6)
“Some people say you fight fire with fire: no, you fight fire with water, not with fire. We will put out the blind hatreds of sectarianism not with sectarianism of our own but with love and with solidarity.”
— American-Syrian freedom activist Amina Araf, who wrote the blog ‘A Gay Girl in Damascus’ under the name Amina Abdallah, in a post on Sunday, June 5. On Monday, someone claiming to be Araf’s cousin wrote on the blog that she had been kidnapped by armed men in the Syrian capital. (MSNBC, June 7)
The San Francisco Giants were the first professional sports team to participate in the “It Gets Better” campaign. Now, online activists are hoping other teams will follow in the Giants' footsteps.
Saturday, the Boston Red Sox announced that they would create a video for the popular anti-bullying campaign “It Gets Better” after 12-year-old Sam Maden's online petition to the team received tens of thousands of digital signatures in a matter of days.
The Chicago Cubs have committed to making a video, as well.
After Maden's success, Change.org has been flooded with petitions for professional sports teams, including the Atlanta Braves. Created late last night by Alan Thacker, the petition targeting the Braves calls for the organization to take a stand against homophobia in sports: