Queer Youth

“Queernessis not yet here. Queerness is an ideality. Put another way, we are not yet queer. We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality. We have never been queer, yet queerness exists for us in an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future.”
- José Esteban Munoz

The idea that young people are agents of change and harbingers of what’s next is not exactly news. We know this. Or we should by now. They’ve been at it for ages, pushing us toward the next thing (and the next). Their insistence on talking back to injustice, urging us to move beyond our limitations and pointing out how we are failing to live up to our own ideals might make older folks uneasy; but without that nudge to better the world no matter what and by any means necessary, who would we be? And perhaps even more importantly, they inspire us to ask ourselves, who might we become?

This is especially true for LGBTQ+ young people whose very existence depends on their ability to change the world so that the future not only includes them, but also celebrates them for who they are. 

The Trevor Project and The Future Perfect Project are two organizations that I co-founded in an effort to make it better for LGBTQ+ youth. I am the Artistic Director of The Future Perfect Project

The Trevor Project - 1998 to present
The mission of The Trevor Project is to end suicide among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ+) young people.

The Future Perfect Project - 2017 to the future!
The Future Perfect Project is a national arts initiative amplifying the voices of LGBTQIA+ youth through high-quality creative programming and professional artistic mentorship. By producing and facilitating in-person and remote programs in podcasting, music, creative writing, and more, we provide young people with queer-affirming spaces and professional tools to express themselves authentically, connect with others, and share their vision of a better future for us all, one in which everyone is free to be themselves. 

“You have to give people hope.”
- Harvey Milk