Wednesday, November 10, 2010

The "It Gets Better" Campaign Goes Mainstream -- and Misses the Whole Point

"The wave of B-list celebrities and straight liberals making It Gets Better videos just keeps growing. But there's a problem: As the discussion about gay-teen suicide has radiated outward, it's stopped being about gay teens. Kim Kardashian has a video relaying how hurt she was at online comments calling her fat [!]. The public conversation and the policy response have shifted from stopping anti-gay harassment to preventing bullying in general," writes Gabriel Arana. "The It Gets Better project started off as a community response to growing up gay in a society where that's not accepted. It would have been nice for the public at large to join the conversation, but instead, they changed the subject." READ MORE