The Upshot‘It Gets Better’ campaign leads to surprising videos
Joel Burns, a city councilman in Fort Worth, Texas, has released a moving message to gay teens that their lives will get better, in the latest viral video to join writer Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" project. The clip, which has netted nearly half a million views, features a speech Burns delivered before the Fort Worth City Council. After its adoption in the "It Gets Better" campaign, it has won wide plaudits, with the webzine Salon.com, for instance, hailing it as a highlight of the "Year in Sanity," noting that "during a routine meeting, a Fort Worth public official gives an awesome, emotional speech to gay teens."
In the video, Burns says he was moved to share his personal struggle growing up gay in a conservative town because of the recent stories of young gay teens who took their own lives after being taunted over their sexuality.
[Video: Tim Gunn's emotional message]
Burns describes his childhood growing up in the Fort Worth suburb of Crowley as an awkward "band dork" with a cowboy dad and then told a story he said he had never told anyone before.
One day when I was in the ninth grade I was cornered by some older kids who roughed me up. They said that I was a faggot, and that I should die and go to hell where I belonged. That erupted the fear that I had kept pushed down, that what I was beginning to feel on the inside must somehow be showing on the outside. ... There must be something very wrong with me, I thought. Something I could never let my family or anyone else know.
Burns choked up and said he would skip over a part he had written down because it would cause too much pain to his parents. He then urged teens contemplating suicide to seek help and know that their lives will change for the better.
"Please stick around to make those happy memories for yourself," he said. "And the attitudes of society will change. Please live long enough to be there to see it."
Burns recommended that young people experiencing bullying over their sexuality contact The Trevor Project, a suicide hotline for gay teens. Burns became Tarrant County's first openly gay elected official when he won his seat in 2007.
We've rounded up Burns' video and a few more surprising and moving videos from the campaign below:
Former 'N Sync star Lance Bass says, while growing up in Mississippi, "I was one of those bullies who always made fun of gay people ... I had this big secret."
A man imparts a simple musical message:
A high school student grieves for her dead friend, whom she says was teased for being transgender.
You can read our interview with Dan Savage, the creator of the project, and find more videos here. You can also check out our interview with suicide prevention expert Ann Haas, who says the issue of mental illness has been dangerously ignored in the conversation around bullied kids who die by suicide.
(Photo courtesy of Joel Burns)
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