Alabama's Tuscaloosa County School System will allow its lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students to attend prom with same-sex dates. The school district also has recognized the right of students to wear clothing with slogans expressing acceptance of LGBT people.
Over the last year, the American Civil Liberties Union has asked officials from hundreds of school districts around the country to make changes in their Internet screening systems to eliminate bias, said Anthony Rothert, a civil liberties lawyer based in St. Louis. All have agreed to, he said, except Camdenton, which the A.C.L.U. sued last summer. Last month, Nanette K. Laughrey, a United States district judge in Jefferson City, Mo., issued a preliminary injunction ordering Camdenton to discontinue “its Internet filter system as currently configured.” She wrote that “any new system selected must not discriminate against Web sites expressing a positive viewpoint toward LGBT individuals.”
The It Gets Better Project has been featured in several episodes of the hit Telemundo novella, "Relaciones Peligrosas". It Gets Better has been featured in the storyline surrounding Alejandro “Ale” Portillo (played by Puerto Rican actor Kevin Aponte). The frequent target of bullying, Ale begins to come to terms with his sexuality with the help of It Gets Better. In a recent episode, Ale made an It Gets Better video in which he said: “The struggle against your bullies ends the moment you accept yourself for who you are, because you get to be at peace with yourself.”
Hundreds of Texas educators, politicians and LGBT activists attended the White House LGBT Conference on Safe Schools and Communities to hear about the Obama administration’s efforts to fight bullying and prevent hate crimes and to discuss local progress. (During his speech), Attorney General Eric Holder said the “It Gets Better” campaign is more than a slogan, but something the administration is backing up with “robust action,” like the five-year settlement with the Anoka-Hennepin school district reached March 5. Holder called the settlement, which brought resolve for six students for the harassment they had endured for years, “a blueprint for sustainable reform.”
The It Gets Better Project is now in Chile with the launch of the affiliate website todomejora.org. In August 2011, after seeing the need for a message of hope for Chile and Latin America, activist Júlio Dantas Cezar raised the idea of creating a Spanish version of itgetsbetter.org. The following month, Cezar invited a group of volunteer professionals from the areas of education, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, engineering and visual arts to develop the project for Latin America.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the Democratic National Committee's chairwoman, released an "It Gets Better" video on Thursday in support of bullied young people. "For anyone who is going through a tough time, for anyone who has been bullied or feels alone or different, it gets better," the congresswoman says in the video. "Sometimes, it's hard to see that what we're going through won't last forever. When we're in a tough spot, it's hard to imagine that there will ever be a time when it doesn't feel like the world is crashing in on us."
U.S. Air Force senior airman Randy Phillips is dedicating the next several months of his free time to training and raising money for the AIDS/LifeCycle, a 545-mile cycling trip down the California coast. The problem isn't fund-raising; he's one of the top earners so far this year. The tough part, says Phillips, is that the temperature at his military base in Germany is minus 6 degrees Celsius, and he hasn't been on a bicycle since high school.
Dan Savage, co-creator of the "It Gets Better" project, engaged audience members in a post-show discussion about homophobia and anti-gay bullying following the March 9 production of fml: How Carson Mccullers saved my life at Steppenwolf.
Life often looks bleak for gay teens. Reports in the newspapers and from government and gay-rights outfits suggest homophobic bullying is rife. A large and growing collection of mostly American online videos, known as the “It Gets Better” project, reassures young gays that their lives will improve after they leave school. Yet a new study suggests things are already getting dramatically better.
Building on the June 2011 Directive on the treatment of transgender veterans, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has announced a clarification to its records policy that will make significant difference in the lives of trans veterans.
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