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TheGoomba wrote:

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He says that he goes and parties with openly gay friends at clubs, 100% closet fag.

AE: You seemed extremely comfortable with the fact that Charlie was smitten by you and even with showing physical affection. I think you won legions of gay fans when, early on, you interviewed that "I don't see any romance between Charlie and I. I think he's a great guy, you know. I can see that he's handsome and smart and all those things. I really can appreciate that about him. It's just not really the way I roll."
ML: Yeah, I commend Charlie at the same time. He had to make certain adjustments. As a gay man, maybe it's possible that he did find me attractive, which would be very flattering and very nice, but knowing I would not be able to return the same affection it takes courage to be able to put yourself in that situation.

I've been in situations where I've been in love with somebody and she would never even give me the time of day. In that case, I can see that to maintain a friendship there are certain boundaries you have to set up, and things that you have to respect. I hope that people can appreciate that by now, my God, you can have a friendship between a gay man and a straight guy. I thought we were beyond that, but obviously with the voting of the recent few days that's not necessarily the case. But it was great, I'm so lucky to have met Charlie.

AE: Where do you come by your attitudes from? Was it the way you were raised or did you have a lot of gay friends?
ML: I'll be honest, no. I grew up in the South which is a wonderful and educated place, but there are definitely some very tough ideas in the kind of place I grew up. Public high school is not the most welcoming place for gay people. We had some people who were courageous enough to be out at that time and it definitely gave me something to think about.

My parents have always been very open-minded. I grew up in a bicultural household and you learned to welcome other cultures and other mindsets. As somebody that would rather choose to love somebody than castigate them for something that I'm sure I could be punished for a hundred times over, it just seems silly. I don't know where that came from. I think it was just a combination of my experiences.

Then I moved to Atlanta which is a very progressive place and has a large gay community. I have a very good friend there who came out a couple years into our friendship. It didn't change him as a person. It just meant we hung out at a couple different places, but why not? I love these people. I love them as friends. Anyone who is my friend I care about whether they're black, white, gay, straight. It's just nuances, something to appreciate about them and something to add to our friendship.