9781422275276

Foreword I’m so excited that you’ve decided to pick up this book! I can’t tell you how much something like this would have meant to me when I was in high school in the early 2000s. Thinking back on that time, I can honestly say I don’t recall ever reading anything positive about the LGBTQ community. And while Will & Grace was one of the most popular shows on television at the time, it never made me feel as though such stories could be a reality for me. That’s in part why it took me nearly a decade more to finally come out in 2012 when I was 25 years old; I guess I knew so little about what it meant to be LGBTQ that I was never really able to come to terms with the fact that I was queer myself. But times have changed so much since then. In the United States alone, marriage equality is now the law of the land; conversion therapy has been banned in more than 15 states (and counting!); all 50 states have been served by an openly LGBTQ-elected politician in some capacity at some time; and more LGBTQ artists and stories are being celebrated in music, film, and on television than ever before. And that’s just the beginning! It’s simply undeniable: it gets better. After coming out and becoming the proud queer person I am today, I’ve made it my life’s goal to help share information that lets others know that they’re never alone. That’s why I now work for the It Gets Better Project (www.itgetsbetter.org), a nonprofit with a mission to uplift, empower, and connect LGBTQ youth around the globe. The organization was founded in September 2010 when the first It Gets Better video was uploaded to YouTube. The viral online storytelling movement that quickly followed has generated over 60,000 video stories to date, one of the largest collections of LGBTQ stories the world has ever seen. Since then, the It Gets Better Project has expanded into a global organization, working to tell stories and build communities everywhere. It does this through three core programs:

6 Love Makes a Family • Friends, Family, and Significant Others

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