Dan Savage, the Editorial Director for the Stranger and also the syndicated columnist who writes Savage Love recently responded to the suicide of the gay 15-year-old Billy Lucas by starting the YouTube channel titled “It Gets Better”. Billy Lucas killed himself by hanging after years of being harassed and bullied for being gay. Dan wrote “I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.”

Dan described how gay adults aren’t allowed to talk to these kids because the kids parents might be homophobic or they go to school in conservative communities that wouldn’t allow a Gay Straight Student Alliance or a gay speaker to come into their schools. Dan had the insight that he can speak to these kids directly via the Internet and started the YouTube channel. It’s been getting a lot of press attention, and justly so.

But since Savage started the site, there have been a plethora of other suicides reported, including Asher Brown, a 13 year old in Texas who hung himself, Seth Walsh, another 13 year old in California who also hung himself, and 18 year old Tyler Clementi in New Jersey, who was secretly videotaped making out with another male student by his college roommate and another student, and then the video was posted on the internet. Clementi jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge that spans the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York.

And finally, Anderson Cooper has reported on the Michigan Assistant Attorney General Andrew Shirvell and his bizarre obsession, stalking, and harassment of gay student body president Chris Armstrong at the University of Michigan. The interview is “must see TV”. Armstrong doesn’t appear to be at risk for suicide, but this story highlights the kind of bullying and harassment gay youth experience on a daily basis. The tragedy of this story is that the tormentor is an adult. Shirvell appears to be a seriously troubled individual and in my opinion needs the help of a competent mental health professional.

I don’t believe that all these stories coming to the fore right now are just a coincidence. Rather, I suspect there is some sort of critical mass of attention forming around this issue and it’s finally getting the attention that it is due, in large part because of the efforts of Dan Savage to bring attention to this tragic, previously invisible problem.

It’s true that if you can survive the torment of growing up gay in an openly hostile society (and sometimes a hostile family) that things do indeed get better. But sadly, for Billy and Asher and Seth and Tyler, they didn’t hear that message soon enough, and they ended the torment in the only way they knew how. This has to stop, and my deepest prayer is that all this attention on this problem will lead us to that goal.

I came across an interesting article on the web site PsychCentral.com titled “Proof Positive: Can Other People Make Us Happy?” by Daniel Tomasulo, PhD. He describes both old and new research that posits that happiness is largely a byproduct of healthy, satisfying, connected relationships.

I spend a lot of my time in my sessions with clients talking about relationships, or sometimes the lack thereof. Some clients come to me specifically with relationship issues, sometimes the relationship issues are secondary to their presenting problem, and sometimes clients are struggling with the lack of satisfying relationships in their lives and they experience a profound loneliness and emptiness that impacts everything else.

Regardless of where clients are with the issue of relationships, I emphasize the importance of good communication as the lubricant that keeps relationships healthy and optimally functioning. Sometimes the task is to improve honesty and self revelation, sometimes it’s overcoming the fear of self disclosure and exposure, sometimes it’s just taking steps to put oneself in settings where other people can be met and overcoming the fear of judgment and rejection. Whatever the individual challenges, we all have work to do with regards to relationships.

And the benefits from that work should lead inexorably to more happiness. I think the effort is worth it. What do you think?

I’m part of a list serve from a spiritual community where I was once a resident. There are often updates from past residents about their lives and one recent individual wrote about how she’s currently working with “homeless homos with AIDS”. I immediately found her use of language to be insensitive and inappropriate and I responded to the list serve with my opinion. It seems I struck a bit of a nerve since the topic of language became a lively thread for the past few days.

This incident makes me think of Laura Schlessinger and her recent incident with the use of the “n” word. When a black women called in to complain about her white husband and his white friends insensitive use of racial language, Schlessinger went on an n-word rant, using the word multiple times to highlight what she deemed the hypocrisy of black peoples use of the n word where others were forbidden from using it. I take her point, but I find her method of raising that point to be offensive and gratuitous.

I would argue that if we all agree that some words are offensive and hurtful then they shouldn’t be used by anyone in an effort to do no harm to others. The women I mentioned above who described homeless homos with AIDS justified her use of that language by identifying herself as gay. I wrote back and told her I didn’t think it mattered, particularly because she only identified herself as such after the fact and because she didn’t know who her audience was when she used that language.

I will admit to using that sort of language in the privacy of all gay settings, and I recognize that it’s a risky business to play with language in that way. At the same time, I would never use that sort of language in a mixed setting or when I couldn’t be sure of the sexual identity of all those present. Am I marking myself as a hypocrite? Perhaps. But my point is that language matters, and we should all be more sensitive to its use, and abuse.

I had the good fortune to spend this past weekend with dear friends in their lovely home in Truro. It was a relaxing time for all except for one small issue: I have a difficult time adjusting to a new bed in unfamiliar surroundings, so I didn’t get the best nights sleep.

This reminded me of all the new research that keeps accumulating about the importance of sleep hygiene (that’s the somewhat goofy word to describe good sleep). While a little dated, a 2005 study conducted by the National Sleep Foundation found that Americans averaged 6.9 hours of sleep per night, and they report that represents a drop of about two hours per night since the 19th century, one hour per night over the past 50 years, and about 15 to 25 minutes per night just since 2001. Folks, we’re sleeping a lot less than we used to and it’s not without consequence.

While it might be common knowledge at this point that decreased sleep can impact mood and cognition, what’s only recently being discovered is how sleep deprivation impacts hormone regulation and weight gain. Multiple epidemiological studies show that people who chronically get too little sleep have a far greater risk of being overweight and developing diabetes. Additionally, sleep deprivation can lead to higher risk of high blood pressure and heart disease.

In this fast paced, always-on, round-the-clock temptation world we live in, it’s easy to avoid healthy sleep behaviors. But isn’t it easier to avoid weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease by sleeping a full 8 hours than to try to treat these conditions once they’ve developed? Seems so to me.

Sleep well!