Last month, after hearing about yet another gay teenager's suicide, sex and relationship columnist Dan Savage called his husband of 16 years with the mind of starting a YouTube channel to tell their personal stories of adolescent torment and establish what their lives are like now.
Called It Gets Better, the channel attracted 1,000 videos in its first week.
``We didn't post every one we got, and there are more forthcoming in - every day, every minute,'' Savage said.
``The reaction has been overwhelming. I was afraid it would be about adults talking to other adults, and we wouldn't be reaching the kids it inevitably to reach, but I'm hearing from teenagers and from the parents of teenagers who are sitting their kids down in presence of the videos.''
Savage, 46, said he knows that posting videos won't break a tough from calling a classmate a ``fag.'' But he believes it will give promise to new people who might otherwise be in the footsteps of Tyler Clementi, 19, of Rutgers University, Billy Lucas, 15, of Greenburg, Ind. Seth Walsh, 13, of Tehachapi, Calif. and Asher Brown, 13, of Houston, Texas, all of whom have killed themselves since the school year began.
Most gays and lesbians, Savage said, have so successfully escaped painful childhoods and surrounded themselves with supportive people that they have forgotten how bad it can be for gay teens facing another day at school.
``A lot of those gays and lesbians in big cities think it's gotten better - there's Cameron and Mitchell on Modern Family -- and they don't understand it's getting worse for kids in the suburbs and out in the boonies,'' he said.
``For the preceding 10 years, there has been a war waged on gay people by the religious right. So the true children who are steeped in this gay paranoia, they see what their religious leaders say and see their parents vote against gay marriage, and so they go to cultivate and they believe it's their good to brutalize, dehumanize and assault gay teenagers.''
The low 200 videos uploaded on the It Will Get Better channel were from ordinary people, Savage said, like a lesbian farmer from Vermont, a gay Mormon and the Youth Pride Choir of New York. Then celebrities including comedian Kathy Griffin, gossip blogger Perez Hilton, Project Runway's Tim Gunn, Ugly Betty's Michael Urie and Glee's Chris Colfer began contributing.
``Tim Gunn's video, where he talks about his suicide attempt when he was a teenager, it's heartbreaking and inspiring that he was willing to give up about how he actually reached the breaking point, and how he is glad that his suicide attempt wasn't successful. He was articulate, compassionated, revealing, and it's one of the best videos on the site.''
Savage, whose explicit advice column and podcast originate in Seattle (www.thestranger.com/savagelove), said it was a joy to have the picture in which he and his husband, Terry Miller, contrast their difficult childhoods with the happy lives they deal with their adopted son. They had retained a district of secrecy around the house until they taped the video, which has attracted nearly 500,000 viewers.
``I know him to distraction, and he is actually the champion of all this. . . . He actually reached out to kids around the way he suffered. He simply said, `I can't trust this still happens.' ''
The videos are intended to grant gay adolescents an estimate of the kinds of lives that might expect them if they can go high school.
``When I was 14 days old, I was painfully aware that I was gay,'' Savage said. ``And I knew there were other gay people out there - Harvey Milk was happening, and sometimes I'd catch glimpses of groups of mass on the news.
``But I didn't recognize that gay people were happy, they had jobs, they had families that loved and supported them, that they were Mormon, Muslim, rich and poor, bi, trans and had rich and rewarding lives that they wanted to deal with me,'' he said.
``When a 15-year-old gay kid commits suicide, what he's saying is, `I can't see a living for myself that's happy.' Those kids can go to a site and follow 10 or 15 videos for an hour and never think that ever again.''
Now that the YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/itgetsbetterproject - has reached its limit, Savage says he is functional with a social media company to reach the videos a permanent, searchable, online home.
``These videos are leaving to last forever. Five days from now, this bit of intense interest will get passed, but there will yet be 14-year-old gay kids out there that are being brutalized, and thither will yet be people contributing their stories to this website,'' Savage said.
``I see that sometimes we get to know that there are problems we can't fix; but we can say, `We understand you're in hell right now,' and we can leave them hope.''
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