Such a simple message, but just so powerful.
It gets us a little choked up!
We’ve always really liked Mark Ruffalo because he genuinely seems like such a nice, decent guy, but we officially think that he’s absolutely incredible after he recently opened up about his first encounter with a homosexual person back when he was still in high school, and how it really shaped his perspective on the matter!
He explains:
“During my senior year of high school, a really close friend of mine came out to me. He was so depressed, he was suicidal for weeks. I kept asking, ‘What├óΓé¼Γäós wrong with you?’ He├óΓé¼Γäód cry, but he wouldn├óΓé¼Γäót tell me. I didn├óΓé¼Γäót know what a problem so big could be, so I thought he killed somebody. Finally, I got him to tell me, and that was the first time I knew a gay person. I├óΓé¼Γäód heard about gay people, but I had no idea what that was. At the time I was in Virginia Beach, where homosexuals were like an urban myth. All of a sudden, there it was in front of me, and it was a person that I really admired. He asked, ‘Are you not going to be my friend anymore?’ I said, ‘Of course not.’ You come to a moral question at that moment: Is this person I├óΓé¼Γäóve known all this time now a dreaded, horrible human being that├óΓé¼Γäós to be shunned, or is this person just like everybody else, except for a different sexual orientation? Luckily, I├óΓé¼Γäód had whatever it takes to make someone see a person for who they really are ├óΓé¼ΓÇ¥ and to stand up and accept that even when other people around you don├óΓé¼Γäót.“
Wow. Truly such inspirational words.
He really can’t have any idea how important that support must have been for that poor kid at the time!
And to think that the shame that society forces closeted men to feel is so overwhelming and intense that he would assume that his friend would have to have killed someone to be acting the way that he was! Over something as insignificant as a sexual preference.
How deeply sad.
Thank goodness for people like you, Mark! And thanks for supporting us in the fight to STAMP OUT HOMOPHOBIA!
It will happen!
[Image via WENN.]