"It Gets Better" — Love, Pixar
I should have known that there were a lot of gay people working at Pixar. How else would a Sarah McLaughlin song wind up in Toy Story 2? For the record, I didn't cry during that scene. There was a draft in the theater and my eyes were watering. Seriously though, every one of these "It Gets Better" videos are tear jerkers for anyone with even half a heart.
On a personal note. One of my 2 best friends in high school was gay. We actually met in a school bible study and prayer club that met at lunch time. I still remember the day I showed up at his house to go hang out and he was in the middle of screaming and throwing and breaking things. I had no idea what was going on. I just walked past his mother and younger brother and went down to the basement where my friend was standing heaving with full body breaths. Fists clenched at his side. Tears covering his face. At the time I had no idea he was gay. He didn't tell me why he was so upset with his step father other than to say that he was an asshole. His step father was in the military and they were evangelicals and it's not hard for me to put two and two together now. But at the time I had no clue. I just remember talking about how school was almost over and we would both be free to live our lives away from asshole parents.
It gets better.
We lost touch after I moved away to go to seminary but years later we ran into each other in the mall in my home town. I knew he was gay at that point. I remember walking up to him, me interning at an evangelical church to be a minister, he dressed in a way that made it probably impossible not to know he was gay. As I walked toward him I could tell he was shaking. When I smiled and gave him a hug and said how happy I was to see him he had a shocked look on his face. He said he was certain that I would try to tell him that he was going to hell just like everyone else he knew had told him. I shouldn't have been surprised to hear him say that to me but I was because it never even entered my mind to say or even think something like that about my friend. I told him that I was happy that he was finally happy with who he is. And then it was like no time had past.
That moment probably solidified my quitting being an evangelical minister. I couldn't even comprehend my friend being tortured with fire forever for being happy. After all the misery growing up fighting with himself and everyone else over who he was. How could a god who made sunsets and beaches and redwood forests torture someone for being who they are? Or anyone else for that matter.
Every time I see one of these videos I think of my friend and I wish he had something like these videos to give him some glimmer of hope in all his pain. But I hope that as his friend I gave him something good during that time to balance out all the bad. And I think that maybe there is a draft in my house today.