The reporting of a string of suicides has rocked our national consciousness in the last two weeks. In the drive to define the issue and find a solution, the national response has been off the mark and incomplete.
In the last month, the national media reported on about 10 specific suicides of teenagers. These teenagers were gay, and many had been bullied while in high school or college.
In reaction to such tragedy, journalist Dan Savage began the viral video-based It Gets Better Project, which received much publicity and even video postings by President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and various celebrities encouraging LGBTQ youth to find ways to cope with bullying.
While Savage and others should be applauded for their efforts to reach out to those who may have no one to reach out to, naming the campaign the "It Gets Better Project" in addition to the narrow focus on bullied LGBTQ youth leaves much to be desired.
First, the decision to pick the “It Gets Better” Project name: the implication is that although bullying for LGBTQ youth may be awful, things will get better later in life. While this message, and the project’s stories of how bad LGBTQ bullying improved after high school, ultimately have an optimistic view of the future, they’re inconsiderate of the potential for change at the present.
At the end of the day, any title to any project is going to be somehow limiting in its scope. Yet that does not excuse the narrowly defined focus of the It Gets Better Project on bullied LGBTQ youth. The 15- to 24-age range averages over 11 suicides per day in the United States, according to the American Association of Suicidology.
Over the almost month-long period in between the suicide of Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi and the present, the national media has highlighted 10 or so of the 300 estimated youth suicides — all because the 10 were gay and were bullied.
Without diminishing the magnitude of LGBTQ bullying and tragedy of the 10 suicides, people like the creators of the It Gets Better Project have been taken in by this contrived media story in the haste to support LGBTQ youth and condemn LGBTQ bullying. In so defining the 10 suicides as something associated with their LGBTQ identification, the creators of the Project have framed the discussion outside of the equally valid yet more inclusive categories of youth suicides or suicides in general.
Why frame the story as an LGBTQ issue instead of a more inclusive definition? It is doubtful if a story on 10 unconnected youth suicides or simply 10 unconnected suicides would be considered "newsworthy."
Also, the battle for equal LGBTQ rights via state marriage policies and in the federal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy makes LGBTQ rights the civil rights battle of today. While I completely support the LGBTQ community in its fight for equal rights, there are better ways to champion equal rights than by creating a project that does not target the 95 percent or more of those youth that committed suicide during the same time as those who were publicized by the media.
Send comments to Dan at djgarry@asu.edu
