A few days ago, a boy named Jonah Mowry, posted a video on YouTube which has already reached a million hits. Jonah’s story, told on hand written cards placed infront of the viewer one by one, describes how he has been bullied since 1st grade. He describes the names he’s been called, his suicide attempts, how he doesn’t like himself and his utter fear in starting 8th grade next month. Jonah’s video is a simple attempt at raising awareness about bullying, and in particular, gay bullying because of his sexual orientation.Watch the video here.

The most impressive aspect to this individual attempt at speaking out, is the immediate and explosive reaction from his empathisers. So far we have found numerous responses to Jonah’s outcry. This is a social media phenomenon that is worth getting across and worth contributing to.

Here are some of the ‘make you want to shed a tear’ reactions to Jonah’s video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd23lcUZJQM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhuPai1Srk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttpHgO5bv2E&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFVvBgLjnW8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s7vrxXHcSg&feature=share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWog7phsQ90&feature=related

If you don’t want to create your own video of support you can follow Jonah on twitter https://twitter.com/jonahmowryreal and support him on facebook http://www.facebook.com/Support4JonahMowry. The saddest thing about this one boy’s plight is that this is not an issue contained in the school playground. Worldwide we are seeing many governments sticking to homophobic laws that violate human rights. Nigeria’s senate has just voted in favour of a law criminalising same-sex marriage, St. Petersburg became Russia’s second city to prohibit so-called propaganda of “sodomy, lesbianism, bisexualism and transgenderism, and pedophilia to minors”. If our governments aren’t getting it right, it makes you wonder how school children can ever be expected to.