Aside from the issue of where this question will be decided – in DC or at the state level – it is clear that Clinton’s argument is basically one of vocabulary, or semantics, or definitions of terms if you will. In the muslim environment, marriage can be between one man and up to 4 women; but in our western environment, marriage has long and everywhere been between one man and one woman.

Same-sex ‘marriage’ is thus not ‘marriage’ to most people. If we could find another word for it, such as HRC’s ‘civil union’, and assign to it all the concomitant rights and obligations of traditional marriage, then HRC and many, many other people would be in favor. It’s just a matter of vocabulary.

Not that I think ‘civil union’ is so great. One day the boys at Hillbuzz tossed out the idea of finding another word for same-sex marriage, but gave no suggestions. I have none myself, but then again I’ve forgotten my Latin and Greek and Hebrew. Maybe we could just take the Greek, Hebrew or Chinese or word for marriage from some African language, transliterate it into English, and use that as a new word. Just an idea…

There are so many campaigns out there that have videos pushing people to contact congressmen or donate money, but the It Gets Better Project was never that, at least to me. It was about having a real human face on the other end of the world, reminding me that it was okay to be human, to suffer, and to feel not alone.

Don’t change. I think an awareness campaign is more important than the forceful advertising tactic.

For older LGBT folks I think it’s mostly just a way to help us deal with our grief & guilt feelings for having failed so miserably in accomplishing what the “gay liberation movement” set out to do: change the world so that others coming after us wouldn’t have to go through the horrors of the closet we grew up with. We once realized that it would take a thorough revolution to fix the things that needed fixing before we settled for assimilation…

We were fine there for a while, thinking that the next generation was better off because of the work some of us have been doing all these years. We have reason to believe there is way less homophobia overall in today’s youth. Now there are queer youth-oriented organizations, GSAs, local centers & programs in certain areas of the country (and a show like GLEE on TV!) — none of which we could imagine existing when we were young.

With all this we still hear about the tragedy of kids who obviously have a tougher time dealing with their environments and situations than we did. We didn’t have it so bad that we didn’t survive it. We didn’t feel that the only way out was suicide. Some did, for sure, but we’ll never know who they were for the most part. This point is that those of us who are still around did not feel so hopeless & helpless that we actually killed ourselves.

Yes, we have the advantage of being so many years or decades out of that miserable time of life so we can pat ourselves on the back for making it through and tell each other that it sure as hell IS better now than then. It got better. For us. But when have teenagers ever really cared what it’s like for people years older than themselves? All they want to know is what we can do for them – now.

Not saying I have an answer to that. Except that I know that we need to do better than platitudes and promises. If we really want to make a change in their world it’s the world we have to change, not them. If we want to see that queer kids get out of their teenage years alive like we did we have to do more than tell them things will be different when they grow up.

I think you’re mistaken from critiquing “It Gets Better” as a whole. It was never created as a political platform for politicians to try to get votes. It was created to help the LGBTQ youth of today in a time of their life when it’s hard to believe or think that life can get better than the day to day torments of school days.

Words come before actions and someday politicians will be willing to come out of the closet, so to speak, and support us directly. They just have to get over their fears of being completely ostracized by their constituents and any other fall out that could happen.