What if, when he was young, Ian McKellen had been turned out onto the street by his family and become another homeless gay teen statistic? Where would you Lord of The Rings and X-Men fans be without him? For all you know they might have cast Dick Van Dyke or Andy Griffith as Magneto and Gandalf. Consider that.
Furthermore, think of how sad and diminished 80s dance pop would have been if Samantha Fox hadn’t been around to jubilantly slut it up in acid-washed jeans and sing enduring anthems like “Touch Me” and “Naughty Girls Need Love Too.”
That’s the point of the new series of ads from the U.K.’s Albert Kennedy Trust, a gay youth housing charity that helps young people get off the streets and into jobs and homes. They rounded up some famous Brit gays (including people like comic Sue Perkins and TV presenter Andrew Hayden-Smith, mostly unknown in the U.S.) and cast them as homeless in a series of public service announcements. As seen above, without any kind of support McKellen could have ended up huddled in a sleeping bag on the pavement being fake-peed on by terrible kids spraying 40-ounce bottles of beer and lovely Sam might have resorted to giving blowjobs for cash.
If you avoided the same fate, go give some money to your local gay youth advocacy group right now. It’s the least you can do.
How about we take this to the next level?
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pc
naughty girls need love too.
Jeffree
Major props to Señor Dave White for bringing up the topic of homeless LGBT youth. There but for the grace of an adoption agêncy would be me, hungry, on the streets, trading plêasure for shelter, food, & g~d knows what else.
Dave, can you please tell (lïnk) us where to turn so we can make a difference?
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Where oh where is my über secret cyber-crush DivKid when we need him to comment on all things British or Welsh corgi-ish?
divkid
@Jeffree: ye-es!? who dares rouse me from my crypt…
.. ahhh, it’s jeffree, my lovely flumpet.
jeffree, i find this campaign powerfully disturbing. it could be said to be teetering on the edge of morbidness; but narrowly manages to avoid it.
i was on the street for a time after the initial stages of permanently exiling myself from my family (a preemptive strike before they — inevitably — rejected me). so i can see how these terrible scenarios could easily arise. my nightmare is that i’ll end up like one of these people, isolated and alienated.
hopefully, i’ll be the last generation, at least in this country, that’ll have to cut themselves asunder from any chance of a family life, in order to be true to themselves. that’s a hell of a toll to pay for self respect and freedom.
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yes i am indeed fully qualified to hold forth on all matters english, welsh, AND irish ( my mother is (was?) a dublin gurl); and all matters german (i looked after a neighbours’ dachshund for a week!).
ps thanks for thinking of me, i had retired my submit finger, but i never could resist a cutie 😉
fagburn
A charity tries to raise awareness about gay kids being homeless and killing themselves and Queerty takes the piss?
JEEZ!
Mark Evans
2 stars who are open about their sexuality try to do something good for the gay community and this is how they are repaid let alone disgrace the memory of Albert Kennedy whose foundation this is honour of. Shameful.