Mark Ruffalo Reveals Persoanl Reason LGBT Equality Is Important To Him

Two of my children graduated from First Colonial High School in Virginia Beach which is located about a mile from our former home.  So did Mark Ruffalo who recently appeared in the movie The Normal Heart.  Adding to the feeling of coincidence, Ruffalo recently revealed why LGBT equality is so important to him.  One his best friend at "FC" as locals call First Colonial High School, was gay and came out to Rufalo.  That experience impacted Ruffalo.  Here are details on Ruffalo's reflections on The Normal Heart via Queerty:

In real life, the 46-year-old father of three is also an unflinchingly dedicated activist who raises his voice about issues that provoke his strong sense of injustice, including the struggle for marriage equality. Ruffalo chatted with Queerty about why The Normal Heart is still timely, how he developed romantic chemistry with costar Matt Bomer and the personal reason LGBT equality is so important to him.

There are some vocal people out there who believe gay men should be cast as gay characters. Did you, as a straight man, have any trepidations about playing such an iconic gay role? 
Yeah. [Laughs] I said that to Ryan, but he told me I was missing the point completely. The meaning of the movie is that it doesn’t matter what a person’s sexuality is. He said he chose me because I was the right actor for it. He was much more evolved about it than I was.

Since this is one of the most important gay-themed projects ever written, what kind of pressure did you and the cast and crew feel to get this right?
It was huge. We were all aware of that. Part of the reason I was worried about taking on the role is it means so much to so many people and if we got it wrong it would be a disaster. I didn’t think we were going to get it wrong, but there was an onus on it. We owed it our all. It was important that we just went for it 100 percent. Everyone came to it that way. At the same time, that vulnerability made us embrace each other in a way that was good for the ensemble as a whole. We all felt the weight of the material and the importance of it and the despair of all the people who lost their lives and the people who survived and what they desperately fought for and against.
You and Matt Bomer have really strong chemistry and are completely believable as a couple in love. How did you two become so at ease with one another?
A lot of it was just the material and being committed to it. There was a lot of care and reverence toward each other and the journey we were taking together. Those people you carry this story for who are either dead now or suffered or were treated so badly and cruelly you give away your ego to that and then there’s a lot of compassion. And Matt and I have a lot of compassion for each other. We were always checking in and asking “how are you doing?” “Oh, man this is going to be such a tough journey.” This was daunting in different ways for each of us but for similar reasons.

Why have you taken such a personal interest in gay rights and stories that portray positive images of LGBT people? 
When I was growing up people were in the closet. When I was in high school my best friend came out to me. I thought he was the only gay person who could possibly be in the whole town. He came out to me and I had to really check myself a little bit. At that time, I’m talking 1984-85, homosexuality was still this fringe thing. It wasn’t out in the open. In certain places you could be gay, but in other places you knew not to be and that was acceptable to the gay community as well as the straight community for the most part. What these guys did and much to Larry Kramer’s genius was to say no, this isn’t cutting it. We have to be gay everywhere. There’s no shame in who we are. We have to let the world no who we are. Otherwise we will always be the other.  

I was 17 years old and my best friend came out to me with basically a declaration of love attached to it. I had to look into myself and ask myself “How do you feel about that and how does that sit with your values of equality?” It took me a moment to get my head around it, but I didn’t stop being his friend. Actually, to a larger degree he felt more uncomfortable about it than I did. Leading up to his telling me he was in so much pain and physical agony. I could see he was disturbed and I kept asking, “What’s the matter?” He said, “I can’t tell you.” This was going on for weeks. I asked if he killed somebody. I couldn’t figure out why he was suffering so much that he couldn’t talk about. Then he told me he was gay. So I started looking around and thought that was messed up. I looked around and understood he didn’t have a choice about it. It was very clear to me as a 17-year-old that that wasn’t something you chose. Why would you choose to live under such angst and persecution. Who would choose that? That’s the way the culture responded at that time. 

My thanks go out to Ruffalo for his support for us.  His story does under score how coming out to friends and family does change hearts and minds.

  

The Normal Heart - Thoughts and Reflections

The husband and I watched "The Normal Heart" on HBO and found the movie to be not only well done but emotionally gripping.  The two of us were in very different places in our lives during the time period covered in the film.  He was in a relationship with his first partner while I was married to a woman and living in the suburbs, first in Houston and then in Virginia Beach.   The husband knew individuals who were lost to AIDS whereas, I was isolated and largely detached from the horrors that were happening.  The reaction by many in the straight community - that gays were diseased and to be avoided - likely deepened my subconscious resolve that I could never, ever face the reality of who I was.  The result of the reaction of the straight world was that thousands died with little or no support and research to battle HIV/AIDS was delayed. 

One of the most disturbing aspects of the film was in the closing credits when it acknowledged that Ronald Reagan did not first utter the term AIDS in public until 1985 when he pledged to make research a priority.  The next sentence then states that his 1986 budget instead cut funding by 11%.  To far too many, HIV/AIDS did not matter because it was perceived to be happening only to gays, a group reviled by the "Godly Christian" crowd and deemed "other."  That heterosexuals in Africa were contracting it and dying too did not seem to matter, probably because of white American racism that relegated African blacks to realm of "other" as well.  Its the mindset we still see from the conservatives and angry white conservative Christians: if you don't look just like me and don't hold my beliefs, then you simply do not matter.  Indeed, you're not even human.  Behind much of this is the ever present poison of religious belief.

Much has changed since the early 1980's, but one thing has not: many continue to die and far too many Americans simply do not care.  In the Hampton Roads area, HIV/AIDS is a crisis within the black community, yet many black churches and black pastors continue to refuse to face the crisis much less cease their rampant homophobia which continues to cause black men to be "on the down low" and/or fail to seek testing and treatment.  Elton John has an op-ed at CNN that looks at the ongoing problem and the still deadly disinterest that too many hold toward HIV/AIDS.   Here are highlights:

"The Normal Heart," written by my friend, the brilliant playwright Larry Kramer, and based on his story during the earliest days of the AIDS epidemic, tells a tale that many of us lived through, and many others did not survive. It's as relevant today as an HBO movie as when it premiered on the stage in New York City in 1985.

Back then, The New York Times refused to print the word "gay," and New York Mayor Ed Koch was agonizingly slow to respond to the unfolding epidemic. Fear was everywhere. Around the country, family members shunned infected relatives, doctors were afraid to touch AIDS patients, let alone treat them, and hospital wards filled up with young men covered in lesions, dying excruciating deaths. I've almost lost track of the number of funerals I went to in those years. My friends were dying all around me -- I'm lucky that I somehow survived.

ACT UP, the coalition that Larry founded to address the crisis, coined the phrase "silence equals death" as its rallying cry, and it was no exaggeration. By the end of 1983, AIDS had claimed 2,100 lives, but the government would hardly acknowledge that anything was awry. I can't help but wonder, if those in power had cared more, if they had done more, perhaps we could have ended this epidemic before it began to circle the globe. But they didn't care, they didn't act, and 36 million people have died of AIDS since.

Worldwide, another than 1.6 million people will die of AIDS this year

Today, African-Americans represent 12% of the national population, but they account for 44% of Americans living with HIV, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Gay and bisexual men comprise only 2% of the American population, but they represented 30% of the nation's HIV infections in 2010.

The crisis is particularly acute in the American South, where homophobia is rampant.

I hope HBO's production of "The Normal Heart" will compel a new generation to act up. There is so much work still to be done, but there's also so much potential. The characters in "The Normal Heart," living as they did in the 1980s, didn't understand what they or their friends were dying of, and they didn't have treatments to manage the disease. They hardly knew how to protect themselves.

Today, we know how to protect everyone, and we have the ability to treat every single person living with HIV. . . . Today, as ever, silence equals death.

[W]e must speak out against injustice, act with compassion, and fight for equality.  If enough of us raise our voices, we can finally begin to end this epidemic.

Just imagine if the millions and millions of dollars spent by "family values groups," the Mormon Church, the Catholic Church and the Knights of Columbus to keep gays inferior under the law had been spent instead on HIV/AIDS prevention, education and treatment how many more might be saved from HIV?AIDS.  The "godly Christians" continue to be the strongest argument available as to why one would not want to be deemed a Christian. 

 

Readers - especially straight readers - need to watch The Normal Heart.  It should be required viewing for Republicans in particular.