On Oct. 24, 2010, members of GMCLA (Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles), along with their friends and supporters (including me), gathered at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles to sing a song of hope and love.
I can write a long article about how on Sunday when we came together in love to deliver this message of hope and support, God's grace filled the room and everything came together quickly and easily. I can write a long article about the chills that went up and down my body the whole time I participated in making this video. But I won't. Rather, I will let the power of this music speak for itself, which it is doing so well. In two days it has become the #1 video on youtube.com in the activism/non-profit category. Give yourself this gift today by watching:
This was created for Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" project, a response to the LGBT teen suicides that occurred this fall.
From my heart to yours, let this message be for any teen -- whether LGBT, straight, fat, skinny, in a wheelchair, or anything that makes you different -- who is considering that your differences are reason to take your life. It's not! Rather, your differences are a gift to be cherished.
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But glory through extreme tragedy. We were too late for the suicides of October 2010, and all those for the decades preceding.
Your video left me weeping for hours and hours, with bittersweet jubilation mixed with deep grief. I am an old dinosaur of a gay activist. I sat at dinner one night in 1977 with a galaxy of early gay activists (I was a young educated arm candy surfer boy with excellent political connections), and the talk turned visionary: what would victory look like. A straight politician opined to general agreement, that victory would mean protecting, loving, and nurturing gay youth from infancy into adulthood. The same politician also guessed that this would be extremely difficult because the homophobic right had already settled on villifying all attempts by gay men to help questioning youth as a form of predation.
We did not forsee that success in reaching out through all forms of public interaction (thank you Barney Frank and Bart Simpson!), would mean that children would question and discover at ever more vulnerable ages, and that the visible toll of death woud rise. I say visible because I know how terrfiying and secret the sad river of unreported gay teen suicide has been for decades.
Now, with 100s of thousands of voices raised, and the glorious voices and images of the LAGMC giving them focus and expression, is like heaven opening in the midst of armageddon. I am jubilant through my tears, rejoicing in my grieving.