Comments

1
Way to go Giants, Cubs and Red Sox.

Dan, you could have made it better for someone else if you had only given them 2 minutes of your time. It would have meant a lot to a gay 16 year old.
2
Signed the petition. The way the Mariners' current season is going is proof: It DOES Get Better!

3
If you want local athletes (straight and gay, together) check out the Seattle Quake rugby club videos - one of our guys even made into the Google ad! We had too many volunteers, so we created our own channel on YouTube for with the guys that didn't make the official video:
http://www.youtube.com/user/SeattleQuake
4
Very nice. Now if only the Cubs would figure out how to play better!
5
it almost reads as though Mr. Savage is worried all the straight jocks are taking over his project.

next time, perhaps he could just stop at "I think it's great."
6
Amen, and I disagree with @5. Dan does a good job of accepting mainstream and celebrity help, but continuing to encourage the grass roots, every day, "I have a regular life and you can too" videos.
7
This is really cool, though also odd that there will soon be more IGBP videos by major league teams than openly gay major league athletes.
8
Maybe the clubs' vids will help make a space for some player to come out. That would be making it better.
9
Yeah, you nobodies really make it better. False modesty is the only modesty some people are familiar with.
10
@8 - totally! I was just thinking to myself, it would be even more awesome if a few closeted, high profile, active pro athletes would come out.
11
videos from average everyday folks mean more in a "from the heart" way, but videos from celebs get you more mainstream exposure. which then reaches more average everyday folks.
12
Go Sox! and go everyday people who try to help out one of if not the suicidal group in the country, LGBT youth.
13
The thing that's great about the celebrity jocks doing it, isn't how encouraging it is to young gays, but it sends a message to young straight kids that you shouldn't bully people, which I know isn't the central idea of the project, but if your a young sports fan and you see your idol saying these things, then maybe the next time some other kid is being tormented, you might not go along with it.
14
The hardest thing about making it all the way to the majors is telling your parents that you're gay.
15
It gets better.
16
@13 - Exactly. The heart of this project is encouraging LBGT kids, but the side benefit is the message it sends by association to the others. This project is taking multiple directions. It's great.
17
Yesterday my 16-yo stepdaughter said she was "in love" with someone, and when I asked, "a guy?" b/c it wasn't really clear, she said: "Yes, I'm straight. Trust me, if I were gay or bi, everybody would know about it!" So glad to live in a world where we can have this conversation.
18
I can't help but wonder how much longer it will be before some usage of "It gets better!" were used as a schoolyard taunt itself.

I approve strongly of the project; I was a straight kid who got called "faggot" screamed at me every day---I finally realised that they just used the word to inflict pain, not as a specific insult...and then they started asking for sex. I got through it with the implicit "it gets better" of "someday this will be the past", which I think is what a suicidal kid might need to hear---"If you kill yourself, they've won."

But the ignored or approved student sadists who help govern our schools, much as gangs are used to govern our prisons, are enormously inventive, and will let no major trend go to waste, so I'm afraid that "It gets better," will become part of their repertoire.

I don't do "hope", I assess odds and make predictions---I think the damage done will be much less than the benefit received, because in the absence of "It gets better" they would have just used something else, though less useful---nothing beats using something that was supposed to help to injure, which is in fact the sin addressed in "Thou shalt not boil a kid in its mother's milk."
19
I think it's great that the Sox are doing this. You would be hard pressed to find a place more racist and bigoted than Boston. Sure, the intelligentsia isn't so bad, but even among them there is a right wing faction. The people who file into Fenway are the people who have to hear this message. Great job Dan and Terry.
20
"It gets bettah"
21
Glad to hear about the "It Gets Better" videos by these sports teams, but I am pissed by the reaction of anti-gay politicians and groups. I just read this wonderfully funny and snarky article at glbtq.com called "Confessions of a Blog Addict. Or Why I Love to Hate GetReligion.org and FamilyScholars.org."

From the section on GetRelgion.org:

"On the heels of the suicides of gay teens Asher Brown and Tyler Clementi in October 2010, Terry Mattingly confessed that he too was bullied. "I was a pudgy, non-athletic boy in sports-mad Texas and, to make it worse, I was a musician who sang in classical choirs (boy soprano, no less)," he confided. But, he added, "these weren't the main reasons I was bullied. There was something even worse to those bullies--I was a preacher's kid."

That's their answer to Dan Savage's charge that the pandemic of anti-gay bullying is related to the hateful rhetoric of religious leaders. Their self-pitying, self-indulgent, morally bankrupt response to the suicides of gay youth would be shocking were it not so predictable."

Here's the url for the article: http://www.glbtq.com/sfeatures/confessio…
22
I think what Dan's forgetting is that at this point, the IGB videos are doing two things- first, they are helping those young kids feel better about being who they are (which is why the normal, everyday folks videos are so good).

But the videos are also showing people who've never cared, nor thought about gay issues that this is something they should be caring about. That's where these celebrity videos can be helpful. Maybe they'll speak to the bullies, or to the people who've so far not taken a position on gay rights.
23
I agree stories from individual people are more powerful most of the time but also think we need these mainstream celebs and sports figures to send the IGB message, doing so may give insight to youth that participate in sports in school that picking on LGBT people or anyone for that matter to be cool. and you have to think that if you think it is hard coming out as an average student , imagine trying to come out as the star quarterback of lineman. now do I think some celbs just just on the bandwagon of a powerful movement for their own gain? absolutely but hey it also is a gain to the movement. and in response to #1= I hope nobody including Dan forget where they came from and take that minute to help another even if just to lend an ear. sometimes people gain great strength in themselves once they know they have been heard.
24
If any team knows that it gets better, it's the Red Sox. I just wish that it got better for the Cubs, too.
25
Maybe we need a series of "it gets worse" videos showing what horrible lives bullies end up having? Unfortunately, since many of the personality traits and habits I've seen in bullies are those useful in other bad hierarchies---that is, almost all work-places---I'm not sanguine about the distribution.

My guess is basically a Gaussian peaked around "successful middle-manager" with larger-than-Gaussian heights for "unsuccessful criminal" and "extremely successful executive", but that guess probably has more to do with my biases than reality.

Roger Ailes evidently will seize any opportunity to make fun of someone's accent.
26
Just thought I'd share one of the comments from the Sons of Sam Horn, an online forum of the most die-hard Red Sox fans, in response to this news:

"There would be no more compelling 'It gets better' video than somebody saying 'I hid who I was for a long time. But now I play for the Red Sox.' Then he should get a shaving cream pie in the face."

Pretty awesome.
27
There are more petition links here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/05…
28
I would love it if, barring an actually gay player coming out, the Sox or the Cubs could use players with openly gay friends and relatives in the video and have them talk about the positive things those people bring to their lives. That would be a powerful message not only about a positive future, but also for any closeted athletes.

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