Dan Savage: Energizing The Groundswell

Dan Savage is not exactly a household name, but I think it would be fair to say a lot of Americans know at least something about him. To some people, he is the man who redefined Santorum; to others, he is a sex columnist; and to others still, he is the man who co-founded and publicized the It Gets Better Project. To me, he is all three. I hate Rick Santorum, so it makes me laugh to hear people talk about his "Google Problem;" I listen to Dan's podcast and read his blog every week; and I was so excited to see how far the It Gets Better Project has come. A lot of people call or write to Dan telling him that he has made them realize its okay to be LGBTQ, but after yet another gay teen committed suicide due to bullying, Dan and his partner, Terry felt like they had to do more to encourage teens who were feeling conflicted or suffered from bullying because they were different. So they produced the first It Gets Better video and posted it to YouTube:

According to Dan, the It Gets Better Project is really Terry's (his husband's) brainchild. But the thing is, Terry does not have the 138,00 Facebook Fans that Dan has, he does not have hundreds of people calling and writing him every week. When Dan says jump, his fans say how high? In Dan and Terry's video, they talk about a lot of things: how they met, how they came out, how horrible high school was, and how worth it was to stick out the bullying. The purpose of the videos are to show LGBTQ teens (and everyone who suffers from bullying) that they are not alone. It has been a year and a half since the project first began, and there are now around 220,000 It Gets Better videos on YouTube. It is impressive enough that so many people have made these videos, but I find it amazing that even people like President Obama have made one:

Now, there is even an It Gets Better Book, and every day people are still uploading new videos. According to Bernoff, "the groundswell [is] a spontaneous movement of people using online tools to connect, tak[ing] charge of their own experience, and get[ing] what they need - information, support, ideas, products and bargaining power - from each other (x)." Hundreds of thousands of people care enough to make these videos, and even more are watching them and becoming more hopeful about their own situations.