Speaking of sex, Anne Laurie’s post reminded me that I’d forgotten to pimp Dan Savage’s It Gets Better book, which is now available in bookstores everywhere.
On this week’s Savage Love podcast, Dan interviewed an ACLU lawyer who specializes in defending the rights of gay teenagers. It’s amazing what one letter from the ACLU will do for, say, a lesbian who wants to attend prom in a tuxedo. The latest ACLU project for schools is Don’t Filter Me. It helps students at schools that filter out sites like It Gets Better or the Trevor Project, yet allow access to “pray away the gay” sites.
Both of these organizations are doing great work, and it’s worth a moment to remember that in amidst our discussions of disasters like the Republican budget and Fukushima.
WereBear
SO many good causes… so little money.
As someone launching a teeny tiny business myself; Thanks, Republicans, for wrecking the economy and making my struggle so damn much more difficult!
bago
Dan’s also a pretty good DJ. He rocked it at the Re-Bar.
mai naem
Well, hell, we all know the Repubs would be happy if gay teenagers just killed themselves more so now that the gheys don’t have quite the wedge issue cachet that they used to have.
Also too, The Donald is talking about Obama’s birth certificate on Morning Ho. Why is this multiple bankruptcy multiple fake hair appliance A-Hole considered a serious anything?
bago
Although if you want to be truly subversive, remind people that “<a href="http://www.scripturezealot.com/2008/03/15/psalm-23-your-rod-and-your-staff-they-comfort-me/"your rod and your staff, they comfort me“.
Ok, your html parser on your blogging platform is truly f’d up. I mean, most FYWP comments were from people that didn’t grok html, but this arbitrary encoding standard is just insane.
WereBear
Because he has a lot of money, silly!
Don’t you appreciate the way life has become so simple? Millenia of ethical struggle and religious philosophy when it really is all about the do-re-mi.
Keith G
As a gay kid in the 70s I survived high school in Ohio(lettered in football-felt very lonely), and got to college in time for the building wave of “gay is sorta okay”.
In 23 years of teaching public school in Houston, I was so gratified to see a near straight (I know) line increase in acceptance of gay students, first by their peers and finally by the adults. There are exceptions, but they are ever-shrinking in number, school by school.
I think that this is one of the quietest civil rights revolutions in history.
WereBear
@Keith G: ALL of my gay friends (in a small Southern high school in the 70s) swore me to secrecy, because a guy could get killed that way.
Really.
The ladies were so closeted I didn’t meet any until college.
In the 40s, a classmate of my mother’s committed suicide and no one knew why for fifty years. She was gay. Saw no way out.
Scott
@WereBear: Christ, that last bit is depressing as hell. :(
suzanne
I went to high school in the second-largest Mormon community in the world (scenic Mesa, AZ–a.k.a. “The Pit of Despair”), and my best friend was the only out gay dude there. He got so much shit—death threats, harassment, you name it. He and I tried to start a Young Democrats chapter there, and not one member of the faculty would sponsor it. We both worked on the school newspaper, and we did a special issue focusing on the issue of homosexuality in high schools, and we ended up winning some big state award for it. Fast forward to our ten-year reunion, at which I find out that some ridiculous amount of my classmates had since come out (seriously, my husband, who’s from San Francisco, noted, “You have a LOT of gay classmates!”), and there’s a gay-straight alliance. I’d like to think that I had even a tiny part in making someone’s life a little easier in that way.
Keith G
@suzanne: You did.
rea
Gays were so closeted in the small New Mexico high school I attended back in the early 70’s that I not only did not know any, but it never occurred to me what it meant that all my fantasies were about guys. Spent 20 years being so closeted I hadn’t come out to myself. I suspect that degree of ignorance would be difficult to sustain today . . .
NonyNony
@WereBear:
Agreed.
@mai naem:
He’s not considered to be serious. He’s considered to be “serious”. Subtle difference – you have to pronounce the quotation marks with the second one.
And he’s considered “serious” because the Tea Partiers apparently love the guy. Probably because he has money – one thing about Tea Partiers is that they love their aristocrats[*] and have this irrational belief that anyone who has a lot of money must be really smart because they have a lot of money.
[*] Seriously – in another country most of these Tea Partiers would be die-hard monarchists they seem to love their wealthy overlords so goddamn much.
Gin & Tonic
@NonyNony:
Funny thing is, he doesn’t. Not nearly as much as he lets on. And anyone familiar with NY or real estate or both knows that. What he has is leverage, which is different. The teabaggers who support him are too dim to understand that.
WereBear
I do think that what we have with the “Worship of the Wealthy” going on is the very very primitive part of the brain that tells us if we suck up to the wealthy some of it will rub off.
And this very very primitive part of the brain is all the typical Tea Partier has to work with, anyway. But the sad part is; it works, or there wouldn’t be any $10,000 watches, or the knockoffs thereof.
Bulworth
Are you effin kidding me? Public schools?
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
i emailed dan savage asking for advice on how to go about loin girding. if an email could hang up on me, i think his did.
Greg
@rea I had the same experience in my then-small California town in the 70’s. Younger gay guys now ask me how I could have fought against coming out and deceived myself blah blah. They just don’t realize that gay was so far under the radar in those days that it didn’t even occur to me that I might like men better than women.
matryoshka
It would have meant the world to me to have something like “It Gets Better” as a high school kid. I don’t even remember anyone ever using the word gay back then (mid-70s in Missouri), but I knew I was different and I had an urgent sense that I had to get away from there. Having other adults out there speaking directly to me through any medium would have been a lifeline. Thanks for the reminder, mistermix. This is a problem I can actually do something about, unlike so many others.
mclaren
The Republican budget is the political equivalent of Fukushima, so it all ties in.
Ruckus
I can not imagine how hard it would have been to be gay in high school in the 60s. It was hard enough just to be alive if you weren’t one of the cool kids. I’ve often wondered why individuality is so despised. I kept hearing that we were a nation of individuals, we could be anyone/anything we wanted when we grew up. And it was all crap. Getting along meant conforming. Advancing had nothing or at least very little to do with achievements, it had/has to do with fitting in, being one of the crowd. Or even worse, being subservient. I’m not talking about working together, as a team, on a project or job or in sports, I’m talking about being accepted for just being one’s self.
Anne Laurie
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
He’d have told you to put on your big-boy pants, only he figured you didn’t have any yet.