Now, in the end years before the mid-term election, the job has received videos from some very high-profile political figures-including the president. Last Thursday night, the White House posted a fancy to Savage's site showing President Obama talking now to young, gay Americans about his own experience of exclusion, and support them to look ahead to a brighter day ahead: Shortly thereafter, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (a Democrat representing San Francisco) made a film for the job as well, offering her personal and political support, and citing the recently passed hate crimes law as a set of her allegiance to gay rights: This virtual parade of political leadership was led last Tuesday by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who, in the midst of the chaos surrounding DADT, made a figure of her own. In her message, she refers to her own witnessing of the path to women's equality: The ground to all three videos, of course, is last week's drama surrounding Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which saw the ban on gays in the military overturned and then reinstated in the work of only a few days. Though DADT is back, it is so in a modified form-new rules issued by Defense Secretary Robert Gates last Thursday hold that only the heads of the branches of the armed services (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines), working with the military's general counsel and Gates' personnel chief, will be able to attack people under DADT. Previously, anyone with a rate equivalent to one-star general could write such a dismissal. Even so, tensions with the gay community are running high in anticipation of the election, and the It Gets Better Project videos are clearly designed to finish those waters with gestures of good faith. Many LGBT people may respond much as Savage himself did, in an interview with CNN. As Savage says, while the videos are encouraging for LGBT youth, there is often more that could be done:
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