By: Sean Santos

It bears repeating that not everyone is exposed to the same messages. A TV ad is going to reach a different audience than Savage’s column, or a bunch of gay blogs. Although I do have to admit that it’s a bit late (not only have such a variety of famous people already done these videos, but I also suspect that people who are watching Glee are predisposed to have already heard of the It Gets Better project).

And Lucrese, I know that “Tough it out” is not the ideal advice, but there are a lot of 14-year-olds who aren’t emotionally, mentally, or socially equipped to start a personal crusade against oppression. In fact, those are precisely the people that these messages are trying to reach, the young people who not only feel too overwhelmed to fight back, but are being driven into self-destructive behavior.

Back to the ad: I think it’s important in that it’s a completely unapologetic message from a corporation which (for better or for worse) is something of a cultural institution, and not just a tech company.

People expect pro-gay messages from certain groups (for example, the sort of people who are involved in writing Glee). They don’t expect it as often from private corporations, which would only tend to take such a stand if they believed that a pro-gay reputation will be a net gain for them.

Which is also an important thing to take note of here. There are a lot of companies which were known to be pro-gay within the liberal centers where they were headquartered, or in an unofficial way, or in matters related to their employees and recruiting. Taking such a stand nationally and as a matter of course is something rather different, and it’s increasingly common.