On Wednesday, September 14th, Dan Savage (creator of the It Gets Better project) came to speak at ISU and he held both a Q&A session and gave a speech later in the evening.
During the Q&A, Mr. Savage spoke of his beginning as an online blogger to sex columnist to now a voice for the LGBT community--especially in regards to anti-gay bullying in high schools and middle schools. During his interview he was asked which one of the It Gets Better videos really stood out to him and he answered with Gabrielle Rivera's video promoting not the message of life gets better, but rather that it doesn't and one simply becomes stronger as they progress through life.
When asked how the It Gets Better project started, Mr. Savage spoke of Billy Lucas's suicide and how it really brought attention to the issues of anti-gay bullying in schools and how little support there was/is in schools to help kids deal with bullying and to stop bullying (in general) within the schools. As a reaction to this suicide, Mr. Savage and his husband felt it important to make a video for teens struggling through bullying and to say that life does get better as soon as high school ends. Mr. Savage also brought up that when he uploaded the video he only imagined getting 100 or so videos of various backgrounds to appeal to the diverse LGBT community, but what happened was an influx of thousands of videos that began the trend and viral expansion of what became the It Gets Better project.
All of this information was discussed in the Q&A session and was further elaborated on in his lecture that evening.
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