It Gets Better, Love Pixar

Hat tip to Mary, through whose blog I discovered this video. I share it here for two reasons:

1) Much as I love Bishop Hanson, he is a straight aging white man in a relatively privileged and powerful position. While I am proud he is one of the many who have stood up to say "It Gets Better," I think the message probably rings more authentically true when it comes from those who have lived through the same kind of discrimination and self-deprecation and can honestly say their lives on the other side of that hurt are more fulfilling than they could have imagined as they were going through that hurt. So, I share this because it is a more authentic witness to things getting better.

2) I think one of the great fears in the larger society when it comes to homosexuality is that gay people are out to corrupt children and convert them to the "gay lifestyle." I know in the conversations we had around human sexuality when I was in the parish, there were certainly folks who named this fear. I think this fear stems, not from actual experience, but from lack of known experience of or exposure to actual gay people. To that end, I think this video can help debunk this myth. For if this fear had any basis in reality, then working for Pixar must be the employment pinnacle for gay people, right? I mean, Pixar's target audience is children, and they reach millions of them worldwide every year. If this fear had any basis in reality, given the number of openly gay Pixar employees in this video, I would expect Pixar movies to be loaded with overt and covert recruitment to the "gay lifestyle" . . . and yet, somehow I can't think of any concrete example of this in a Pixar film. So, I also share this video in the hope it will challenge these prejudices and allay these fears.