Adam Zelasko, who plays Mario in the
off-Broadway musical-comedy My Big Gay Italian Wedding, says
in an It Gets Better video that he thought about committing suicide.
Sex advise columnist Dan Savage's It
Gets Better Project encourages troubled gay teens considering
suicide to hang in there and not cave in to bullies, because life
gets better.
“I did have thoughts of suicide,”
Zelasko says in the video that also features other cast members of
the play. “I did think about killing myself. And I had a great
life. I had great parents. I lived in a great town. I had
everything going for me except for being gay and I hated that. And I
was lucky enough to have some really good friends that I thought if
they ever killed themselves and left me that I would not know what to
do. And I could never, ever do that to somebody else.”
“And if you don't think you have
somebody out there that thinks of you that way you're wrong,” he
adds. (The video is embedded in the right panel of this page.)
Celebrities and high-profile
politicians who have created videos for the It Gets Better Project
include President
Obama, Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton, New
York Governor David Paterson, Fort
Worth Councilman Joel Burns, rocker
Adam Lambert and actor Neil
Patrick Harris.