Following an interview with NY Mag in which he officially announced that he was gay, Star Trek and Heroes star Zachary Quinto talks about homosexuality, Jamey Rodemeyer’s death and his decision to come out publicly.

Despite having sidestepped questions about his sexual orientation for years, in a new interview with NY Mag, Quinto was very open about the fact that he is gay. He discussed “the cultural bipolarity” that occurred with the legalization of gay marriage in New York happening in the same year that gay teenager Jamey Rodemeyer was bullied and killed himself:

And again, as a gay man I look at that and say there’s a hopelessness that surrounds it, but as a human being I look at it and say “Why? Where’s this disparity coming from, and why can’t we as a culture and society dig deeper to examine that?” We’re terrified of facing ourselves.

The announcement was subtle, but it was there, and after the article was released, Quinto wrote a blog post addressing his decision to come out publicly:

when i found out that jamey rodemeyer killed himself – i felt deeply troubled.  but when i found out that jamey rodemeyer had made an it gets better video only months before taking his own life – i felt indescribable despair.  i also made an it gets better video last year – in the wake of the senseless and tragic gay teen suicides that were sweeping the nation at the time.  but in light of jamey’s death – it became clear to me in an instant that living a gay life without publicly acknowledging it – is simply not enough to make any significant contribution to the immense work that lies ahead on the road to complete equality.

You can read the complete blog post here.

In the interview with NY Mag, Quinto also discussed his upcoming roles in American Horror Story and the financial-crisis thriller Margin Call that he is both producing and starring in alongside Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci, Jeremy Irons and Gossip Girl‘s Penn Badgley:

The point of this movie is not to judge or to vilify or to place blame on any one company or individual. It’s really to examine the emotional impact that the decisions these people had to make along the way had on them.

The full NY Mag interview is available at this link.