Time for the Queerty Week in Comments, where we present the most compelling, thought-provoking or just downright bitchy replies that came directly from you, the readers! Here’s what made us ponder or giggle in the office:
1. “I’m telling you. If I had a magic phone during the debate she had with Wolfson at Yale Pol Union in Oct 2010, which is touted on her wiki page, you’d have the best evidence of how classless and a fat slob she really is. Munching on her Pork Rinds during the recent show is nothing. She quite literally flashed that nasty gunt at the audience, wearing a tarp trimmed a bit too short, for well into half the debate until a note was passed that she PLEASE sit like a lady. She’s just nasty through and through. You can take the girl out the trash, but never the trash out the girl.”
Pitou also has Maggie’s phone number in Who Will Fill Maggie Gal’s Shoes As NOM’s New Chair?
2. “I’d rather Lady Gaga lobby on our behalf than Joe Solmonese.”
the crustybastard takes a dig at HRC in Could Lady Gaga’s Star Power Help Pass A Federal Anti-Bullying Law?
3. “thanks, qweerty, for bringing this tragedy to a wider audience, and for weighing both the good uses and the potential bad abuses of the “it gets better” project. if only it could have gotten better for jamey rodemeyer. The potential problem with the “it gets better” approach is that it encourages us to resign ourselves to consolations down the road, without getting us to fight to bring that better future about in the short-term. i don’t want adults in schools to condone bullying now just because “it gets better” after graduation. i don’t want kids to accept bullying now because “it gets better,” post-adolescence. i don’t want kids like jamey to suffer through miserable teen years in the faint hope that “it gets better,” that joy lies around some distant corner to come in his twenties or thirties.”
don’t just believe “it gets better”; _make_ it better now. bash the f*ck back against the bashers bullies. call out the bullies in school and get principals to expel them. the meek hope that “it gets better” shouldn’t mean accepting misery in the present, for jamey, or for any queer teen whom it’s not too late to reach.”
adam suggests a different approach in After Another Teen Suicide, Can We Do Better Than “It Gets Better”?
4. “This topic gets really frustrating for me. Sure, Obama may not have our backs 100%, but we’ve also never had a stronger ally in the White House, and we really don’t have a better option right now. I mean, when 2012 rolls around, what you going to do? Vote for one of the Republican candidates? It looks like this next batch is going to be more ridiculous than ever, and then we really won’t have any chance at progress. I know most of us want immediate gratification, but baby steps is better than not moving at all, and we’ve come a long way in the last three years, and a second term of Obama is better than a first term of any of his competitors. And if you don’t vote, we’d better not hear you bitching about a single thing.”
Top to Bottom seems to have a healthy amount of perspective in Stop Acting Like Obama Isn’t The Best President On LGBT Issues Ever
5. “Grandpa! No, no, no! How many times did the nurse tell you not to do that!”
Jens has danced this dance before in R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe Flashes His Penis On Tumblr
velocifero
The It Gets Better Project has run it’s course for sure. Now PR agents use it as a charitable write off for celebrities who wish to write off that new plastic surgery, weave or boot camp training. I agree that LGBT teens need to be taught how to fight back and protect themselves in school and on the web. Plus we need a targeted campaign against parents who breed these little hating monsters to use some birth control and consider the legal consequences of losing their double wide motor homes, OC mansions or Crenshaw Section 8 housing because their ass hat kids bully other students.
Little Kiwi
I’m not sure about the criticisms of the It Gets Better project. I truly don’t get it. It never claimed to be a solution but rather a cheap (FREE!) way to get positive messages out into cyberspace in a concentrated front.
The genius of the project is actually that it got STRAIGHT people talking about LGBT Youth suicides, for the first time ever. Seriously. LGBT Youth suicides are not a new thing. it’s only taken decades for the rest of the world to finally give a fuck. It got people talking, and the beauty of the project is that ANYONE can make a video, and in that video ANYONE can choose to make whatever message they want to make.
So basically, rather than having people “complain” about the project, I’m surprised that they didn’t just make their own video that highlights a message that they would deem more important or vital or helpful.
“PR Agents”? “Write-offs for surgery”? What on earth are you talking about?
The project never claimed to be “the solution” but one of a great many valuable and important First Steps in getting the dialogue about LGBT Equality and anti-gay bigotry going.
There are a great many It Gets Better videos, for example, that are not just saying “hey, it gets better when you’re 30” but do INDEED say “Hey, here’s how you can make it better in your daily life, starting right now”
Of course, most of the people against the campaign will not have seen those videos, because you’re not the target audience: youth without hope. You can keep your grown-ass adult cynicism to yourself until you come up with an applicable, logical and specific alternate plan of action.
Mira
For those who dislike It Gets Better, there is Put This on the Map, which says what many other are saying about “Don’t wait for it to get better, let’s make it better!” Mostly youth-oriented, but there’s something for you.
ewe
What has the Bummer and the Oil companies just agreed to? The price per gallon suddenly declined. There is something suspicious going on.
the crustybastard
Nice. Thanks!
Pitou
YES! Made #1 spot! I soooo still wish I had it on video. I’d still shots plastered on billboards everywhere I could afford them!!
ewe
I heard this out of the mouth of a tv news reporter reading the news as written. “THE THREAT OF A RECESSION HAS DECREASED CRUDE OIL PRICES.” Bizarre. If that is not a statement indicating and validating that Big Oil is controlling the economy i do not know what is.