It Gets Better

The world needs more people like Dan Savage. In case you don't know who he is, Dan Savage is the openly-gay author of the sex column "Savage Love" which he has been writing on a weekly basis for the Seattle alternative newspaper The Stranger since 1991. The column is very frank, humorous, sometimes eyebrow-raising, and always tell-it-like-it-is. While many of the people who write in with questions for Savage are gay or lesbian, just as many are straight and the column is always entertaining and insightful which is probably why it is now internationally syndicated. Savage can be extremely crass and is often harsh in his replies to people he thinks are not thinking through their situations intelligently, and he's taken a lot of criticism for that, amongst other things (the Santorum campaign, anyone?). But he consistently makes good points about problems in our society. For example, in an effort to show how hypocritical denying homosexuals in committed relationships the right to marry is, he and a lesbian friend went to obtain a license to marry one another. He wrote of the experience, "We emphasised to the clerk and her manager that Amy and I don't live together, we don't love each other, we don't plan to have kids together, and we're going to go on living and sleeping with our same-sex partners after we get married. So could we still get a marriage license?" According to Savage, the license department manager said, "Sure. If you've got $54, you can have a marriage license."

Part of what makes Dan Savage so great, however, is his propensity for caring about others. In interviews, on This American Life, and occasionally in his column, he references his husband Terry (who he's been with for 15 years) and their son DJ (who they adopted twelve years ago) with such love that it's almost heartbreaking. One of the sweetest This American Life episodes I ever listened to was a story of Dan getting up in the middle of the night with a sick six-year-old DJ and talking to his son about why he thought his two daddies shouldn't get married. He didn't try to sway him one way or the other, but simply asked questions and let him reach his own conclusions. You can listen to the episode by clicking here and then clicking on "stream episode" (Dan is the second story, but the rest of the episode is great as well). Reading his column, you would never characterize Dan as someone who has a big heart and is an inspirational guy, but that is exactly the case. Never has it been more so than now.

In his "Savage Love" column yesterday, Dan Savage started his "It Gets Better" video project. Responding to the recent suicide of Billy Lucas, a bullied gay high school student, Dan and his husband Terry made a video for all of the LGBT middle and high school kids out there who are struggling to get through each day. In the video, Dan and Terry talk about how they, too, were bullied mercilessly in high school but how they're so glad they perservered and got through it because their lives are so much better now than they ever would have imagined. He then invited other adult members of the LGBT community to submit their own "It Gets Better" videos to his YouTube channel in the hopes that kids who may not see the point of getting through these painful years will watch the videos, have role models to look up to, and know that their high school lives are hellish but only temporary. Dozens of videos have already gone up on the site, from kids who are only a couple of years out of high school to people in their sixties and beyond all sending the same message: life will absolutely get better for you if you can stick it out just a couple more years. It's an ingenious idea that will hopefully save lives and will undoubtedly make some kids out there rest slightly easier knowing this isn't all there is.

Below is Dan and Terry's video, which kick-started the project. And here is a link to an interview Dan gave to the New York Times about it. Like I said, we need more Dan Savages in this world.