The Stonewall uprising, which would give birth to the modern gay rights movement, was still two years away, and the notion of legal gay marriage all but unthinkable. “The characters couldn’t conceive at all of Stonewall, or AIDS, or gay marriage. It was heartbreaking; four years into it before Reagan said the word [AIDS].”Joe Mantello as Ned Weeks in “The Normal Heart” on Broadway. “Painting a rosier picture of gay men back then serves no one,” he says. People who grew up with gay parents, or whose friends have gay parents — and you can’t unring that bell.

Source: Los Angeles Times October 21, 2020 19:12 UTC