Former first lady Laura Bush came out in support of gay marriage and abortion after leaving the White House. She has now gone against social conservatives again to support anti-bullying measures aimed at protecting gay teens. "Bullying of every kind, certainly gay teens, but any children is really terrible," Bush said in an interview Tuesday for the Yahoo Newsmakers series at the Women's Conference 2010 in California.
"We've read cases of children on the Internet where kids are committing suicide. It's really terrible. As adults, we have to be the ones who do something about it," Bush said regarding a the many recent suicides by gay teens, including Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers University freshman who jumped off a bridge after his roommate published a private sexual encounter online.
Bush expressed she was proud of Joel Burns, the openly gay Fort Worth Counsilman, who was among the first public officials to share experiences of being bullied as a teen and tell young people “it gets better.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama are also among officials who have joined the “It Gets Better” campaign by recording video messages of hope for gay teens to be posted online.
In May, over a year after leaving the White House with George W. Bush, the first lady publicly announced she and her husband “disagree” on several social issues – abortion and same-sex marriage being among those issues.
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