Skit: the Normal Heart

I know I am very late to the party as this movie was released in 2014 and it's two years later.  I've been busy. Having seen it first thing I want to say is, I'm a Truvada whore for life.  If you don't know what Truvada is its an antiviral for HIV. You take it once a day at the same time every day and it lowers your risk of being infected. Second I have friends living with HIV. I have been there when my friend was diagnosed. He was scared to have it, to tell anyone, and to even talk to me about it. I wasn't. Its not my life, its not my body, I'm only an outsider looking in.  I was never scared for him for one second. I was never going to leave his side. I knew together he, I and the doctors could control this. I knew his life would change but not for the worse. Its been a blessing and a curse. People have left his life because of it and other have entered. It has been a major cash drain and time consumer. I've driven him to doctors appoints and different clinics. I've paid the some of the hundreds of dollars for the medicine. I've seen a boy turn into a man. I watched an activist be born. I have never been prouder of my friend as when he went into HIV/AIDS work to help people who were scared like he was. He is alive and well. We aren't as close as we should be now but I am still in his corner just the same. Third, this was a preventable crisis that everybody had a hand in making worse. The government reacting so slowly, doctors not having what they needed to research it, the LGBT population for not having protected sex, the general population for not having protected sex,  and drug users sharing needles.  With better information and putting preventive measures into practice as of 2014 new infections are down 35% from 2000 . That is not to say that the number of newly infected people are good because they are not. A staggering 2 million people, at least, where newly infected in 2014. About 5,600 people contract HIV every day.  1% of the total global population has HIV and that percent is still steadily climbing. 1% of 7.2 billion is a lot even though it doesn't seem like much when I write it out. But that statistic increases when you look at specif populations, like the LGBT community, black people, and third world countries. Those stats are so terrible I'm not going to write them here but you can look them up on the CDC and UNAIDS. Fourth, it was a great movie. Very well done in my opinion. I am proud of all the white gay male actors that stepped up to be in that movie. I would have liked to see it feature more people of color and how the epidemic effect those gay men differently. However, it was a biographical movie so I can't be that mad because the person who's life it was about probably didn't have that much contact with gay men of color. Still it would have been nice. It is a tear jerker so bring some tissues. This movie can be characterized as a gay movie as it is about gay men getting AIDS. With that said it is probably one of the only gay movies that doesn't suck. It is a good Gay movie with plot and everything. Watch the Normal Heart, it is worth your time.