In the wake of news of suicides related to anti-gay bullying in California, Indiana, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Texas, and Oak Park is taking action.

During the public comment segment of  this week’s village board meeting, trustees Ray Johnson and Colette Lueck asked the board to support a new initiative to work with Oak Park and River Forest High School to prevent anti-gay bullying. They suggested working with the Oak Park TV station and Oak Park and River Forest High School to produce videos that will hopefully help gay teenagers during an often-difficult time.

“Just because it doesn’t happen in that dramatic fashion in Oak Park, doesn’t mean that it couldn’t, and doesn’t mean there are not multiple smaller instances of bullying that occur regularly,” Lueck said. “Anything we can do to address that is more than called for.”

Johnson said he had some jarring experiences himself. His first attempt to come out was with a close friend when he was a sophomore in high school. One friend told another, who told another, and it got back to a friend’s parent, who barred Johnson from coming to their home.

Later on, he was outed at work when he was 19 years old. His roommate was the one to share the information without Johnson’s knowledge, sending personal letters between him and his then-boyfriend with coworkers. He said his boss at the time, after finding out, made him clean the public toilets every night and increased his workload, which Johnson feels was an attempt to force him to quit.

“You kind of bury these things as time goes on,” he said. “But I kept seeing (the suicides) and thinking about my own experiences, seeing my own face and how painful that was.”

But fellow employees banded together to help Johnson with his extra work, which he said reaffirmed his faith in his fellow man. He didn’t completely feel comfortable sharing his sexuality until he moved to Oak Park when he was 25 and got involved in advocacy groups, knowing there was support in the community.

“I know the pain that it can cause, but it does get better,” Johnson said. “I’m sitting in Oak Park, in a place I call home, in a place I love dearly and with a great support network and great family and friends. That’s the kind of message we want to get out, that it may seem absolutely impossible to get through the day, but there is great support out there.”

The village board informally endorsed the idea with no objection.

Anti-gay bullying has drawn an extensive amount of media attention after numerous suicides from teenagers who were tormented to the point of taking their own lives. The events led to an outpouring of support from gay Americans, most notably through the online project “It Gets Better.” The project, started by author and syndicated columnist Dan Savage, features YouTube videos of gay adults, many who say they contemplated suicide at some point, reassuring teenagers and young adults that their lives improved greatly as they got older.

The most famous video is of Joel Burns, a gay Fort Worth, Texas councilman, who gave an impassioned plea to gay teenagers during a highly personal 12-minute speech in council chambers Oct. 12. The video of his speech instantly became an Internet sensation.

Kay Foran, spokeswoman for Oak Park and River Forest High School, said they heard from the village Tuesday and are interested in working together to fight anti-gay bullying. But she added that it is too soon to know exactly what the collaboration would entail, but said the school is eager to help.

“They did reach out to us and we received it very enthusiastically,” she said. “We look forward to working with the village. It’s a very important issue.”

The school already has a club called A Place for All, a gay-straight alliance that focuses on issues facing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals. The club is open to any student and the mission is to “provide a safe environment and a place of discussion for those who have been troubled by prejudice involving sexual orientation issues and work toward making the school and the community at large accepting of sexually diverse people,” according to the school’s Web site.

“There have been student leaders at the high school and this is a wonderful opportunity to support their work and advance their work in collaboration with the village,” Lueck said.

Johnson said Oak Park has not had many issues concerning anti-gay bullying, but said the issue needs as much attention as possible before tragedy strikes.

“We know we haven’t had an issue (of teen suicide) here, but we do not want to wait,” he said. “We know that bullying happens and too often the use of the other f-word can be heard on Oak Park streets and too often people look the other way.”