Giants to Create 'It Gets Better' Video for LGBT Youth

Giants to Create "It Gets Better" Video for LGBT Youth

By Erin Sherbert Mon., May 16 2011 at 2:28 PM

The champs are here to tell you that it gets better

The San Francisco Giants told SF Weekly today that the team will make an iconic "It Gets Better" video to encourage LGBT youth across the nation. The Giants will be the first professional sports team to join the spirited campaign aimed at curbing LGBT bullying and teen suicides.

According to spokeswoman Staci Slaughter, the team was already considering creating a video even before the change.org petition circulated last week, which requested that the Giants be the first sports team to join the campaign. More than 6,500 people have signed the petition. The It Gets Better Project started in 2010 after a slew of LGBT suicides across the nation. Since then, thousands of ordinary people, celebrities, and politicians have made videos.

"Details of the video are still being worked out so I can't provide you with specifics," Slaughter told SF Weekly in an e-mail today. "But we are confirmed to produce and post a video."

Slaughter said the team was planning to make a video for its LGBT night in August, yet with the recent publicity, the Giants decided to produce the video sooner than later.

Sean Chapin, a Giants fan, started the petition after Atlanta Braves pitching coach Roger McDowell last month accosted some Giants fans at ATT&T Park, asking them if they were "homos." He then took a baseball bat and simulated gay sex in front of the men and their young daughters.

Although McDowell apologized to the group, the Braves suspended him. He is also being forced to take sensitivity training. Although, coincidentally, media outlets are reporting that the coach is back to work today after delivering another apology to the men on Friday.

Chapin says he saw this as an opportunity for the Giants to take a "game-changing stand."

"Professional sports is one of the few remaining pockets of strong homophobia in our country," the petition states. "That's why I am calling on the San Francisco Giants and their players to produce a video for the It Gets Better Project. Should the team make a video to tell our LGBT youth that it does get better, the Giants may catalyze a watershed moment in professional sports."

Go Giants!

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Tags:

change.org, It gets better, Roger McDowell, San Francisco Giants, Sean Chapin, World Series champs

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Professional Athletes David

Nice move by the "Giants"

Professional Athletes David

Wow! Another good deeds for of the sports men. Some may think that this is just a small move, but what they're doing,for me is a big help to the society is for the teens as their advocates. Great guys! Continue doing good stuffs. And for the teens, hope you will appreciate and listen to what these groups are doing for you.

MarJo Eli Hughes

if professional athletes don't know anything about homoerotic behavior how come they always give each other little love taps on the butt?

Kthpence

i think this is great...as a young, gay giants fan - it's great to see my role models stand up for me in a time of need.

FogFoo

Oh wow that seems like a really good idea to me dude.

www.total-anon.us.tc

Erika

I like the illustration of the magazine cover with two team members passionately embracing. Is this meant to suggest that they understand what it's like to be gay? Well, at least they understand what it's like to be OK with affectionate physical contact between males... a lot of guys can't even say that much...

JspiderSF

Yes, but note the protocol of arching their pelvic regions outward to avoid possible awkward contact. Slapping butts: ok. Bumping jocks: not ok.

Elz Curtiss

Thank you, Giants! My grandmother and great-aunt in Heaven, diehard fans in the tough years, are standing with cheering today.

sfmama

I don't know about being gay, but I have many dear friends who are gay. I don't know about having a cleft palate, yet I know a child who has had surgeries to correct that. I don't know about cancer, but I am going to a funeral tomorrow of a dear friend, and my mother is a cancer survivor. It gets better when acceptance happens. I don't have to know what it's like to be gay to know that the right thing to do is treat every person with respect, whatever their situation is.

LLF

I am sure there is a gay Giant or two who is in the closet. Maybe this will give him/them the courage to come out.

tylerw

Please be Buster ;)

Rwolf01

Actually. it is far less likely that anyone on the Giants knows a thing about living with terminal illness, yet pro athletes are happy to engage in random acts of kindness when the Make A Wish foundation calls...

It's called compassion. The world could us a little more of that.

Elz Curtiss

What? Of course they know this! They're lost parents, grandparents, etc. Terminal illness hurts the bereaved as much as it hurts the person who dies.

Brock Keeling

This is just...odd. As far as I know, no one on the Giants knows a thing about being gay or how, at least on a very personal level, it gets better. Meh. Can't hurt, I guess...

Lynn

no one needs to understand what it means to be gay in order to know discrimination against gay individuals is wrong.