Things have changed when it comes to coming out in your teens.
Popular advice columnist and rights activist Dan Savage reflected on the differences between his own youth in the 1970’s and that of LGBT youth in today’s increasingly open cultural climate during a recent interview with a popular Australian news outlet. Unlike the 1970’s – a time when, as Savage puts it, gay youth could “fly under the radar” in school to avoid bullying and homophia – today’s world is saturated with an awareness of gay culture that can make things worse for LGBT youth.
“I was a weird kid with no interest in girls, I liked musicals and I liked to bake and I like to read and people did not automatically assume I was gay,” Savage explained. “Nowadays, there’s an awareness…that an interest in musicals, an interest in baking and a disinterest in girls if you’re a boy…case closed, you’re a fag.”
Savage, who is now 46 and the author of the popular advice column Savage Love, is also the instigator of the hugely popular “It Gets Better” YouTube campaign, a project designed to ease the fears and hardships faced by gay and lesbian teens dealing with bullying and discrimination.
Less than a year after its inception, the It Gets Better campaign has garnered over 10,000 submissions and endorsements from the likes of Google, Pixar, Ke$ha, Joe Jonas, Anne Hathaway and even Hillary Clinton and President Obama himself.
The campaign has grown far beyond Savage’s initial expectations, and in his words, has “saved kids lives.”
Offshoots of the campaign are planned for the UK, South Africa and Israel.
