Heath Ledger and <i>Brokeback Mountain</i> | Issue Letters | Advocate.com | Advocate.com

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Issue 1003
March 11, 2008
Heath Ledger and Brokeback Mountain

Thank you for the wonderful tribute to Heath Ledger in the March 11, 2008 issue. I also want to thank you for including the Ultimate Brokeback Forum as part of the tribute. Many of the fans of Heath Ledger are members on our forum, and I know they all appreciate your articles very much. I've never viewed Brokeback Mountain as a statement about gay 'rights'. For me it has always been about the damage done by homophobia, and a call to make positive changes in our lives. Two years ago one of our members, Jari Koskisuu wrote : "Brokeback Mountain can not provide meaning or purpose to our lives, but it has exposed the need. Shown to us that we may have lost our direction and we need to reclaim it". Heath Ledger's performance in that movie is what moved me to make changes in my own life. I doubt that any other actor would have affected me the way he did. And there are several hundred other members on our forum that feel the same way. After losing over 100 friends to AIDS in the 80's and 90's, my world had become very small. Now I have hundreds of new friends because of Heath Ledger, and not just online. We have in-person gatherings and events several times a year. One of our most loved and popular members, Jackie Pascarella, passed away less than a day after Heath Ledger died. So we on the forum had a lot of pain and grief to deal with. We felt that we lost 2 family members at the same time. We didn't get to attend the memorial services or funeral. Your tribute issue has helped a lot of us come to closure. Thank you again Advocate. And thank you Heath Ledger.

John Trudell a.k.a. BayCityJohn
San Francisco, Calif.
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