Young Hearts is surprisingly good. Okay, "surprisingly" might not be the right word since I wasn't expecting it to be bad, but it was surprising to me that I found it so affecting. From the few things I had read about the film, I had a feeling I would like it, but it really won me over.

What does this 62-year-old have in common with these 14-year-olds? Well, I was once 14, and I experienced many of those same feelings…

It was 1986. I didn’t identify as gay, but I was still drawn to films with gay content. It’s that disconnect where you’re not lying to the world—you’re lying to yourself. I was living in South Florida, teaching at a conservative Christian school. I saw something in the newspaper about the film Parting Glances. It caught my attention. It was playing in a small arthouse cinema in Coconut Grove, which was far enough away from Fort Lauderdale for me to…