The stars have rallied together to support The Trevor Project, a non-profit group dedicated to helping youths who are wrestling with their sexuality, and they are urging youngsters to stop victimising their homosexual peers.
Comedienne Griffin is donating the proceeds from her show at the Gibson Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles in December (10) to the organisation and is hoping others will support the cause.
She tells U.S. newsman Larry King, “I’m going to give my entire salary to them… I’ve been bullied… I remember one time I was getting my butt kicked in a park when I was a little kid. And I’ll never forget a guy walking by with a briefcase, just walking by. And I feel like at this time we can’t be that guy anymore. We can’t walk by anymore.”
Country singer Chely Wright, who revealed she is a lesbian earlier this year (10), has been bullied since ‘coming out’ and is hopeful the situation will soon change: “Since my coming out, I’ve been bullied. I was bullied in school, of course not for being gay, because I hid until May of this year the fact that I’m gay. But since my coming out, yes, I have been bullied. And it doesn’t feel good.
“I am optimistic. But we all have to be paying attention. Everyone should get the same shot.”
Lesbian funnywoman Wanda Sykes adds, “I mean, just as a black person… I know things have gotten a lot better, but there’s parts of the United States that I would be afraid to go to as a black person. I mean, it’s just something that we’re born with, innate. When I go to a place, I check it out, I look around, and I go, ‘OK, is it cool for me to be here?’ And then as a gay person, I have to do the same thing. Until we have laws and until there is a strong presence that says, ‘Hey, this is not right, we’re not going to put up with it’, and it’s just taught down to the kids, then it’s not going to change.”
Openly gay Project Runway star Tim Gunn, who once considered committing suicide, adds, “I felt desperate enough that I wanted to end my own life. And I’m very lucky that my suicide attempt was not successful.”
