Thank you, for those kind words and for the even kinder work that you and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation do every day — especially on behalf of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people here and across America.
It’s such an honor to be here at the inaugural Time to THRIVE conference. But it’s a little weird, too. Here I am, in this room because of an organization whose work I deeply admire. And I’m surrounded by people who make it their life’s work to make other people’s lives better — profoundly better. Some of you teach young people. Some of you help young people heal and to find their voice. Some of you listen. Some of you take action. Some of you are young people yourselves... in which case, it’s even weirder for a person like me to be speaking to you.
It’s weird because here I am, an actress, representing — at least in some sense — an industry that places crushing standards on all of us. Not just young people, but everyone. Standards of beauty. Of a good life. Of success. Standards that, I hate to admit, have affected me. You have ideas planted in your head, thoughts you never had before, that tell you how you have to act, how you have to dress and who you have to be. I have been trying to push back, to be authentic, to follow my heart, but it can be hard.
But that’s why I’m here. In this room, all of you, all of us, can do so much more together than any one person can do alone. And I hope that thought bolsters you as much as it does me. I hope the workshops you’ll go to over the next few days give you strength. Because I can only imagine that there are days — when you’ve worked longer hours than your boss realizes or cares about, just to help a kid who you know can make it. Days where you feel completely alone. Undermined. Or hopeless.
I know there are people in this room who go to school every day and get treated like shit for no reason. Or you go home and you feel like you can’t tell your parents the whole truth about yourself. Beyond putting yourself in one box or another, you worry about the future. About college or work or even your physical safety. Trying to create that mental picture of your life — of what on earth is going to happen to you — can crush you a little bit every day. It is toxic and painful and deeply unfair.
Sometimes it’s the little, insignificant stuff that can tear you down. I try not to read gossip as a rule, but the other day a website ran an article with a picture of me wearing sweatpants on the way to the gym. The writer asked, “Why does [this] petite beauty insist upon dressing like a massive man?”
Because I like to be comfortable. There are pervasive stereotypes about masculinity and femininity that define how we are all supposed to act, dress and speak. They serve no one. Anyone who defies these so-called ‘norms’ becomes worthy of comment and scrutiny. The LGBT community knows this all too well.
Yet there is courage all around us. The football hero, Michael Sam. The actress, Laverne Cox. The musicians Tegan and Sara Quinn. The family that supports their daughter or son who has come out. And there is courage in this room. All of you.
I’m inspired to be in this room because every single one of you is here for the same reason. You’re here because you’ve adopted as a core motivation the simple fact that this world would be a whole lot better if we just made an effort to be less horrible to one another. If we took just 5 minutes to recognize each other’s beauty, instead of attacking each other for our differences. That’s not hard. It’s really an easier and better way to live. And ultimately, it saves lives.
Then again, it’s not easy at all. It can be the hardest thing, because loving other people starts with loving ourselves and accepting ourselves. I know many of you have struggled with this. I draw upon your strength and your support, and have, in ways you will never know.
I’m here today because I am gay. And because... maybe I can make a difference. To help others have an easier and more hopeful time. Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility.
I also do it selfishly, because I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission. I suffered for years because I was scared to be out. My spirit suffered, my mental health suffered and my relationships suffered. And I’m standing here today, with all of you, on the other side of that pain. I am young, yes, but what I have learned is that love, the beauty of it, the joy of it and yes, even the pain of it, is the most incredible gift to give and to receive as a human being. And we deserve to experience love fully, equally, without shame and without compromise.
There are too many kids out there suffering from bullying, rejection, or simply being mistreated because of who they are. Too many dropouts. Too much abuse. Too many homeless. Too many suicides. You can change that and you are changing it.
But you never needed me to tell you that. That’s why this was a little bit weird. The only thing I can really say is what I’ve been building up to for the past 5 minutes. Thank you. Thank you for inspiring me. Thank you for giving me hope, and please keep changing the world for people like me.
Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you.
First and foremost I want to personally thank the Human Rights Campaign for the incredible work that they’ve done and the work they continue to do. Not only here in Washington State but across the country and around the world. As we all know this work is critical, it’s life-changing, it’s live-saving. It is my great honor and privilege to be here tonight, to count myself a member of this community. It is also something of a surprise.
I’ve had a complicated relationship with that word, ‘community.’ I’ve been slow to embrace it. I’ve been hesitant. I’ve been doubtful. For many years I could not or would not accept that there was anything in that word for someone like me. Like connection and support, strength, warmth. And there are reasons for that. I wasn’t born in this country. I didn’t grow up in any one particular religion. I have a mixed race background, and I’m gay. Really, it’s just your typical all-American boy next door. (chuckles) It has been natural to see myself as an individual. It’s been a challenge to see that self as part of something larger. Like many of you here tonight, I grew up in what I would call survival mode.
When you’re in survival mode, your focus is on getting through the day in one piece, and when you’re in that mode at 5, at 10, at 15, there isn’t a lot of space for words like ‘community,’ for words like ‘us’ and ‘we.’ There’s only space for ‘I’ and ‘me.’ In fact, words like ‘us’ and ‘we’ not only sounded foreign to me at 5 and 10 and 15, they sounded like a lie. Because if ‘us’ and ‘we’ really existed, if there was really someone out there watching and listening and caring, then I would have been rescued by now.
That feeling of being singular and different and alone carried over into my 20s and into my 30s. When I was 33, I started working on a TV show that was successful not only here in the States, but also abroad, which meant over the next 4 years, I was traveling to Asia, to the Middle East, to Europe, and everywhere in between, and in that time, I gave thousands of interviews. I had multiple opportunities to speak my truth, which is that I was gay, but I chose not to. I was out privately to family and friends, to the people I’d learned to trust over time, but professionally, publicly I was not. Asked to choose between being out of integrity and out of the closet, I chose the former. I chose to lie, I chose to dissemble, because when I thought about the possibility of coming out, about how that might impact me and the career I’d worked so hard for, I was filled with fear. Fear and anger and a stubborn resistance that had built up over many years. When I thought about that kid somewhere out there who might be inspired or moved by me taking a stand and speaking my truth, my mental response was consistently, ‘No thank you.’ I thought, I’ve spent over a decade building this career, alone, by myself, and from a certain point of view, it’s all I have. But now I’m supposed to put that at risk to be a role model, to someone I’ve never met, who I’m not even sure exists. That didn’t make any sense to me. That did not resonate… at the time.
Also, like many of you here tonight, growing up I was a target. Speaking the right way, standing the right way, holding your wrist the right way. Every day was a test and there were a thousand ways to fail. A thousand ways to betray yourself. To not live up to someone else’s standard of what was acceptable, of what was normal. And when you failed the test, which was guaranteed, there was a price to pay. Emotional. Psychological. Physical. And like many of you, I paid that price, more than once, in a variety of ways.
The first time that I tried to kill myself, I was 15. I waited until my family went away for the weekend and I was alone in the house and I swallowed a bottle of pills. I don’t remember what happened over the next couple of days, but I’m pretty sure come Monday morning I was on the bus back to school, pretending everything was fine. And when someone asked me if that was a cry for help, I say no, because I told no one. You only cry for help if you believe there’s help to cry for. And I didn’t. I wanted out. I wanted gone. At 15.
‘I am me’ can be a lonely place, and it will only get you so far.
By 2011, I’d made the decision to walk away from acting and many of the things I’d previously believed so important to me. And after I’d given up the scripts and the sets which I’d dreamed of as a child, and the resulting attention and scrutiny which I had not dreamed of as a child, the only thing I was left with was what I had when I started. ‘I am me,’ and it was not enough.
In 2012, I joined a men’s group called The Mankind Project, which is a men’s group for all men, and was introduced to the still foreign and still potentially threatening concepts of ‘us’ and ‘we,’ to the idea of brotherhood, sisterhood and community. And it was via that community that I became a member and proud supporter of the Human Rights Campaign, and it was via this community that I learned more about the persecution of my LGBT brothers and sisters in Russia.
Several weeks ago, when I was drafting my letter to the St. Petersburg International Film Festival, declining their invitation to attend, a small nagging voice in my head insisted that no one would notice. That no one was watching or listening or caring. But this time, finally, I knew that voice was wrong. I thought if even one person notices this letter in which I speak my truth, and integrate my small story into a much larger and more important one, is worth sending. I thought, let me be to someone else what no one was to me. Let me send a message to that kid, maybe in America, maybe someplace far overseas, maybe somewhere deep inside, a kid who’s being targeted at home or at school or in the streets, that someone is watching and listening and caring. That there is an ‘us,’ that there is a ‘we,’ and that kid or teenager or adult is loved, and they are not alone.
I am deeply grateful to the Human Rights Campaign for giving me and others like me the opportunity and the platform and the imperative to tell my story, to continue sending that message, because it needs to be sent, over and over again, until it’s been heard and received and embraced. Not just here in Washington State, not just across the country, but around the world, and then back again. Just in case. Just in case we miss someone.
