It Gets Better by Dan Savage Read Free Book Online

mother. With a little incentive from both parents (and a personal interest in travel), he moved to Vancouver, Canada, after high school. He is currently studies at Langara College in the psychology department and he also volunteers at Friends For Life Society.

A MESSAGE FROM ELLEN DEGENERES
    LOS ANGELES, CA
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    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.
    Ellen DeGeneres’s distinctive comic voice has resonated with audiences from her first stand-up comedy appearances through her hit syndicated talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show . The show, now entering its eighth season, has recently won the Daytime Emmy® for Outstanding Talk Show. In 1997, DeGeneres was the recipient of the coveted Peabody Award and earned an Emmy® for writing the critically acclaimed “Puppy Episode” for the sitcom Elle n, when her character came out as a gay woman to a record 46 million viewers. In 2008, DeGeneres became the newest face for CoverGirl and had the honor of hosting the highly rated seventy-ninth Annual Academy Awards. She is the author of two bestselling books, The Funny Thing Is . . . and My Point . . . And I Do Have One .

LIFE UNFOLDS EXACTLY AS IT SHOULD (BUT NOT AS YOU PLANNED)
    by Sean Blane and David Rosen
    OTTAWA, ON
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    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