President Barack Obama tells gay teens
he sympathizes with them in a new public service announcement for the
It Gets Better anti-bullying campaign.
Obama says he was “shocked and
saddened” to learn about the recent spate of gay teens bullied to
death.
“As a parent of two daughters it
breaks my heart,” Obama says. “It's something that just
shouldn't happen in this country.”
“We have to dispel this myth that
bullying is just a normal rite of passage. That it's some inevitable
part of growing up. It's not,” he adds.
Obama says he sympathizes with gay
teens being bullied because they are different: “I don't know what
it's like to be picked on for being gay. But I do know what it's
like to grow up feeling that sometimes you don't belong. It's
tough.” (The video is embedded in the right panel of this page.)
The It Gets Better campaign is the
brainchild of sex advice columnist and activist Dan Savage, who
launched the project by uploading a video on YouTube. Savage
announced Wednesday that the collection of videos which urge troubled
gay teens to get help had swelled to 20,000, with over 10 million
views.
Other celebrities and high-profile
politicians who have created videos include Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton, New
York Governor David Paterson, Fort
Worth Councilman Joel Burns, rocker
Adam Lambert and actor Neil
Patrick Harris.