Dan Savage

It Gets Better
After a spate of gay teen suicides, Savage made a YouTube video with his husband about how they were persecuted as adolescents but now live happy, open lives. "When a 13 or 14-year-old queer kid kills himself or herself," Savage said to a Rutgers University audience, "what they're saying is they can't picture a future with enough joy in it to compensate for the pain they're in now." He used the internet to reach isolated gay teens, and then encouraged his audience to make videos of their own experiences. Two months later, the It Gets Better Project has almost 10,000 videos and over 30 million views. The videos range from ones made by people in the gay, lesbian, bi and transgender community to straight people. The channel has attracted extremely well-known participants like Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Ellen DeGeneres and the staff of Google. The channel can be viewed here.