The Normal Heart

          There is room for all kinds of theater on Broadway. There are fun and campy musicals that make us feel great like Mamma Mia! and Priscilla Queen of the Desert. There are plays that make us laugh like Born Yesterday and Good People. There are dramas that make us think, and cry like Times Stand Still and War Horse. Every so often a work comes along that has the power to make you laugh, cry, think, and more importantly change your guts.

         Larry Kramers The Normal Heart is more than just a beautiful play, it is a call to arms. We are 30 years into the HIV/AIDS plague and we are no closer to ending it than when we began. So many of the issues that are at the core of this play, are still prevalent issues in our society more than 20 years after it was written and first presented off-Broadway.
 
       There have been 35 million deaths from HIV/AIDS. 75 million people have been diagnosed with this disease. We as a civilization have become desensitized and complacent. We still live in a country where gay people are afraid to come out of the closet. There are still more than 20 states where you can be fired from your job, denied housing. or lose your benefits because you are gay. Where it is perfectly legal to discriminate against somebody for being gay. Gay men and women can still not marry each other. All these things help propagate HIV/AIDS.

      People who are not free to be with whom it is they want to be with, very often choose to live a life "normalcy". While living this lie, they continue to engage in sexual behaviors on the side with the people they would rather be intimate with, but are afraid or unable to do so with for fear of losing their loved ones, job, health insurance, housing. etc. They are then bringing this disease home with them, and then to their next elicit encounter.

    Our culture has become completely sexualized. So many of our young people think that they can go out and have sex with whomever they want, and they are not going to get infected with anything. We as an American People need to stand up and fight.

     Take away peoples fear. If people are not afraid to be openly who they are, and what they are, we can see this disease start to be eradicated. If we allow people who love each other to marry, and build their family unite freely and openly, we can see this disease start to decline.f

     If we continue to allow things to progress as they are there is no telling how many more people will die. There is no telling how many more, perhaps worse, will have to "live" with this terrible disease. There are things that can be done. Pharmaceutical companies can be lobbied to lower the cost of meds, giving access to those who cannot afford the astronomical prices. The government can be lobbied into making it illegal for anyone to lose any job, any housing, any medical or other benefit for being homosexual. The Government can be lobbied to allow us  to marry one another, to give us legal validation that our love, our family unit, our support of one another is just as important, profound, and worthy of protection as the heterosexual population.

      This, like the play, has not been much of a review. The Normal Heart is the most important show playing on Broadway right now. It the duty of every living person to see it, and to do something. Make no excuse. I challenge you all to see this play, and NOT be affected to do something.