Earlier this week Jamey Rodemeyer, a 14-year-old high school freshman from Buffalo, N.Y., committed suicide after enduring years of bullying for his sexuality. Jamey even shared his story by posting a video on YouTube as part of the 'It Gets Better' campaign.
Yesterday Jamey was buried by his family, and in his honor Lady Gaga dedicated her performance of "Hair" to him during a set at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas.
Rodemeyer was a huge Gaga fan, and even thanked her in his final blog post. His death seems to have had a profound effect on the pop star, who's announced on her Twitter that she wants to meet with President Obama to press for legislation that would make bullying a hate crime.
This isn't the first time the singer has leveraged her star power to shed a light on youth issues. Lady Gaga has also been a relentless supporter and advocate of homeless youth.
In 2010 Lady Gaga joined forces with Virgin Mobile RE*Generation, a pro-social initiative to provide awareness, funding and volunteerism to tackle youth homelessness.
Recent figures estimate that over two million youth (between the ages of 12 and 24) will experience at least one episode of homelessness each year and over 100,000 youth sleep on the street for 6 months or more in America.
Youth homelessness is the result of other societal problems like poverty, drug abuse and addiction, mental illness and domestic violence which is often spiked in cases of homophobia. Young people who've grown up homeless often spend much of their adult lives homeless.
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