In a new It Gets Better video, Target
employees talk coming out gay, and one female employee adds that she
loves her transgender husband.
The It
Gets Better Project reaches out to LGBT teens contemplating
suicide and encourages them to not cave in to bullies, because life
eventually gets better.
In the nearly 9-minute video, employee
after employee writes down his or her coming out age on a placard
with a marker. Most of them say they came out in their teens.
“I came out when I was 19,” a blond
man says.
“18,” a man says.
“I was 17,” another man says.
“15,” an African-American man says
with a smile.
A young woman holds up a sign that
reads “19” and says: “I think you're always coming out. You
come out every time you meet somebody or have to disclose who you
are.”
“I was 16,” a female employee says.
“My dad asked. And I appreciated that he had the courage to ask.
But I don't think he was prepared to hear the answer that he got.”
“It was very dramatic,” the young
blond young man says of his coming out experience. “It was me in
the back seat and then both of my parents in the front seats facing
forward. I can just see both of their heads sitting in front of me
as I'm telling them that I'm gay.”
A woman who earlier said gay people
make their own families talks about her partner's transitioning to a
man as she holds up a placard with the “B” in LGBT highlighted.
“My husband is wonderful,” she says
with a laugh. “Being married is something I didn't think would
ever happen to me. But when he transitioned from female to male and
all of the gender pieces lined up with his paperwork, we suddenly saw
it was something we legally could do.” (The video is embedded in
the right panel of this page.)
Target is the latest large company to
create such a video, joining GM, Dell, American Airlines, Google,
Pixar, Microsoft
and Apple, to name a few.