It Gets Better (6 page)

LOS ANGELES, CA

 

 

 

 

I
was devastated over the death of eighteen-year-old Tyler Clementi. Tyler was a bright student at Rutgers University whose life was senselessly cut short. He was outed as being gay on the Internet and he killed himself.

Something must be done. There have been a shocking number of news stories about teens who have been teased and bullied and then committed suicide, like thirteen-year-old Seth Walsh in Tehachapi, California; thirteen-year-old Asher Brown in Cypress, Texas; and fifteen-year-old Billy Lucas in Greensburg, Indiana. This needs to be a wake-up call to everyone that teenage bullying and teasing is an epidemic in this country, and the death rate is climbing.

One life lost in this senseless way is tragic. Four lives lost is a crisis. And these are just the stories we hear about. How many other teens have we lost? How many others are suffering in silence? Being a teenager and figuring out who you are is hard enough without someone attacking you.

My heart is breaking for their families, their friends, and for our society that continues to let this happen. These kids needed us. We have an obligation to change this. There are messages everywhere that validate this kind of bullying and taunting and we have to make it stop. We can't let intolerance and ignorance take another kid's life.

I want anyone out there who feels different and alone to know that I know how you feel. There is help out there. You can find support in your community. If you need someone to talk to or if you want to get involved, here are some organizations doing great work: The Trevor Project (at 866-4U-TREVOR) is a twenty-four-hour national help line for gay and questioning teens. And Angels and Doves is a nationwide anti-bullying nonprofit organization (
www.angelsanddoves.com
).

Things will get easier, people's minds will change, and you should be alive to see it.

OTTAWA, ON

 

 

Sean:
David and I are gay. And while we're in our forties now, we were teenagers once, and we know that it's not that easy to be gay. Role models can be hard to come by, especially in very small town like the one I came from. The only gay people I saw were on 1970s TV sitcoms. (
Three's Company
, really?) I didn't even know that being gay and having a normal, fantastic life was an option then. I just figured that this was a phase I'd grow out of, you know, like my '80s hair products. Well,
Jack Tripper
got canceled and now my hair is a lot shorter. Somewhere along the line I knew it was going to get better. The first sign was probably when David and I met each other when we were about twenty-five years old. We've been together for almost twenty years now. We've both got good jobs; I'm a diplomat with the Canadian government and David's a doctor, and we've been lucky enough to have traveled all over the world. It's sometimes hard to see when you're in high school that you are as good as everyone else. Today, I think being gay's a gift. You might not realize it at the moment but it makes you special, it makes you adaptable. It gives you the ability to be successful because you have developed a lot of skills most people never acquire at such an early age. You learn how to read people; how to be an observer; how to be empathetic. But first, you've got to get through some tough parts.

 

David:
High school can be pretty tough. It's hard having to pretend you're something that you're not. And it can feel like it's never going to end. But it does. Once you leave high school and move on to the next phase, you will come in contact with all sorts of cool people who are just like you, people who will accept you for who you are. Sean and I were both worried about telling our families we were gay. We couldn't have been more wrong! Our parents joke that we need to get married. So far we've put them off, but we did give them grandchildren. We have two children, now six and ten, whom we adopted when they were babies. Never did either of us imagine in high school that we would be gay
and
parents. It's true, you have to weather some pretty difficult years but those experiences have their rewards. That's why there are so many creative, amazing gay people. They've all withstood the horrible stuff and made it through to the other side. The other side is pretty great.

LONDON, ENGLAND

 

 

 

I
'm twenty-three years old, and I'm an openly gay soldier in the British Army. Just over ten years ago, gay men and women were not allowed to serve in the armed forces. In fact, in 1998 alone, 298 people were discharged from the army simply because they were gay. This figure is greater than the losses sustained in the Falklands and the first Gulf War.

With the help of Stonewall, the ban on gay people serving in the military was lifted in 2000. For people like me, the progress that has been made in the last ten years has been truly life-changing. I can now be myself and be open about who I am, whilst doing the job I love.

This year I celebrated my civil partnership within the barracks of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment and was featured on the cover of the British army's official publication,
Solider Magazine
, as an openly gay man.

It was in 2005, at the age of eighteen, that I decided to come out. I had been in the army for two years at that point and felt ready, felt confident, to tell people the truth; I was gay. In 2007, I served in Iraq with my regiment for seven months, and whilst I was in Iraq I was able to operate more effectively because I could be myself. I didn't have to hide who I was. I didn't have to lie about who I was.

The army isn't perfect yet, and there is still room for improvement. But the British Armed Services is fully committed to making the military as gay friendly as possible, a place where everyone is able to be themselves. The Royal Navy, the British Army, and the Royal Air Force are all members of the Stonewall Diversity Champions program, where employers work with Stonewall, and each other, in order to improve the working environment for lesbian, gay, and bisexual service members.

My experience shows that a lot can change in a very short space of time. Things can get better today if we all work together to combat homophobia in our workplaces and in our schools. You, too, can make a difference by challenging homophobic bullying at school and by encouraging your school to do the same. If the army can do it, you can do it, too. It gets better today; we can make it happen.

BRONX, NY

 

 

 

A
s a gay woman of color, I just want to let the youth know that it kind of doesn't get better. All these straight, rich celebrities, I'm not even going to name them, they can tell you that it gets better because they've got money and people don't care what they do. They're comin' from a good place and stuff. And I appreciate that, but I'm gonna be real, because I live this life and I'm not rich and I'm brown and I probably look like most of you.

First of all, it doesn't get better but what does happen is this: You get stronger. You realize what's going on; you see how people are; you see how the world is. And as an adult, you learn how to deal with it. You learn how to love yourself. You learn to just take it for what it is. You learn that other people are just crazy and caught up in their own crap.

Like all the people that are religious that say that gay people are bad, and then you see them being caught up in gay scandals. I might be gay, but I don't have relationships with prostitutes—no disrespect to prostitutes—but I don't have illicit affairs with prostitutes and get caught up in drugs. I'm a normal person that lives her life as a gay individual, has a relationship, and just tries to make it in this world. And I would have been just like some of those other kids, and taken my own life, if it hadn't been for my strong family and my religious upbringing.

My parents raised us Pentecostal Protestant with a literal interpretation of the Bible as our guide to navigating life. Coming out to my parents was insane! I thought God was going to strike me dead as the words came out of my mouth. My dad was cool but my mom flipped like it was the end of her world; the world that had me as a straight woman that would give her grandkids. I also thought God would just turn His back on me. I asked Him through prayer every night to take my life, seeing as though I was a deviant homosexual. God never took my life and so I viewed that as a sign to carry on and find love anyway that I could. Even momma eventually came around but on her own terms. I didn't force an agenda. I was just always myself and as a loving mother she found herself with no choice other than to continue loving me as she always had. Damn, now she's practically a gay rights advocate and we've never been closer.

And as for me and God, I view our relationship as hella strong. God made all of us so God made me. Therefore, in my mind, God is cool with being gay. And if Jesus were alive today, he'd chill with us because everybody else hates us. I will say this: Don't give in to this myth that it's going to be fancy and amazing when you're older and that everything's gonna to be fine. Just know that you gotta get stronger. And the stronger you get the easier dealing with all this craziness will be. The stronger you get the more you hold on to your own life; the more you'll love yourself. And you'll be better able to be in relationships with other people. You'll be better able to deal with the fact that you are gay. And you'll realize that's not the problem. It's never a problem to be gay. The problem comes from everyone else giving you a hard time about it, making laws against you because they're afraid to be who you are.

So, do I say it gets easier? No, but you get stronger. And you get more beautiful. And you believe in yourself harder. And anything this messed up world throws at you, you'll be able to handle.

Don't take your own life. It's not worth it. If you take your own life, they win. And if you take your own life, that's one less gay person of color, or white, or disabled, or multi-abled, or whatever, that isn't here, able to show them the truth. So please love yourself. Please be strong. And you'll be all right. That, I do promise you.