Thank you, Matt Bomer

On Sunday night, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association passed out their 2014 awards for the best in film and television. The Golden Globes are one of the most watched award shows on TV, and Sunday's broadcast was recognized by many for its culturally progressive message, from acceptance speeches that recognized single mothers and the diversity of roles for women this year to Jeffrey Tambor receiving an award for playing a transgender individual on the TV show Transparent.

A highlight of the evening was Matt Bomer’s acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the TV film The Normal Heart. Bomer played a  New York Times reporter who died of AIDS during the 1980’s. (Bomer's speech starts at 2:00.)

During Bomer’s acceptance speech, he thanked his husband and three children for their support during the filming, offering that he knew he was really grumpy at times due to his weight loss needed to depict the character. He recognized his fellow actors and the team that brought The Normal Heart to the screen. And he closed with these words, “To the generation that we lost, and the people we continue to lose to this disease, I just want to say, we love you. And we remember you.”

Too often we fall in a trap of assuming that death from HIV/AIDS is a thing of the past, that the epidemic is something we can put behind us. While we are so lucky to have made the advancements we have, there are still too many people dying from this disease. HIV rates are increasing among gay and bisexual men, and young men and men of color are seeing disproportionate increases.

Thank you, Matt Bomer, for recognizing the people we continue to lose from this disease. We need more leaders, from pop culture to politics, to do the same thing.

Lee Storrow is Executive Director of the North Carolina AIDS Action Network.