"I'm always shocked that gay marriage is such a big deal," says Beals over coffee in a Lower East Side patisserie she loves visiting when she's in town. "You have to realize how precious human life is, when there are tsunamis and mudslides, when there are armies and terrorists -- at any moment, you could be gone, and potentially in the most brutal fashion.

"And then you have to realize that love is truly one of the most extraordinary things you can experience in your life. To begrudge someone else their love of another person because of gender seems to me absolutely absurd.

"It's based in fear, fear of the other, fear of what is not like you," she says. "But when you are able to see lives on a day-to-day basis, rather than reducing it to politics, then it humanizes a whole community of people that were otherwise invisible. I think pop culture is really helpful in letting people see another side of life."