Catching up with Mark's mom: Alice Hoagland, mother of Flight 93's Mark Bingham, checks in with her son's biographer, Jon Barrett, just as a film about the 9/11 hijacking hits theaters.

Just hours after Alice Hoagland learned that her son, Mark Bingham, was one of the passengers who sacrificed their lives fighting for control of United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, she announced to the world that Mark was gay. Since then, Hoagland has been one of the most outspoken of the 9/11 victims" family members and a vocal supporter of LGBT equality.

To mark the April 28 release of the Universal Pictures film United 93, in which her son is portrayed by out actor Cheyenne Jackson (and which she had not yet seen), Hoagland spoke with Jon Barrett, author of Mark Bingham: Hero of Flight 93.

What have you been doing the past five years, Alice?

Well, my focus has been on the five thorns in my crown: aviation security, the defeat of terrorism, and reconciling the Muslim world with the Western world--giving audience to the ideas that bring us together rather than the conflicts that divide us. Numbers 4 and 5--and this is in no particular order of priority--are LGBT issues and championing all forms of competitive sports, especially rugby.

Do you feel safe flying now?

No. I introduce myself to the Transportation Security Administration inspectors who screen me ... as a mother of a man who was killed on board Flight 93. And lately I've been surprised that that doesn't register with some of them. They don't know what Flight 93 was. So I tell them. And then, when I get on board, I introduce myself to the crew. And even among them there are people who don't remember Flight 93. But they do remember September 11. In other words, I try to raise the consciousness of the TSA and the crew members. And then I engage people on the aircraft in conversation.

Sometimes, when people find out that I wrote a book about Mark, they bring up the conspiracy theories, that the plane was shot down or whatever. Do they say that to you? Oh, I hear that a lot. I point out that the record shows that fighter airplanes were anywhere from 18 to 30 minutes away from that scene [and] that the plane flew into the ground at nearly 580 miles an hour. All the evidence points to the fact that the plane went into the ground of its own accord whether it was terrorists getting the final say or the result of some struggle between the terrorists and passengers.

People ask me if I think the passengers deliberately flew the plane into the ground, and I don't think that happened. If I had a chance to fight with terrorists and possibly save the lives of everybody on board and myself and the people on the ground, I would be struggling to keep the plane up.

What do you think happened then?

I believe that Mark Bingham and Tom Burnett teamed up on Flight 93 and rallied people by getting in their faces and demanding volunteers and urging them to action and making them focus. I know that there was a lot of bloodshed. I know that there was a lot of mind-numbing horror. And I know that Mark was in on that. He was right there. He was in first class. And even with all that, he was able to pull it together to call me and talk to me calmly. His purpose wasn't to frighten me; it was to say goodbye--to let his family know that he was thinking of them and that he loved them.

With all you're doing, do you have time for yourself?

Yeah, somewhere in there I'm also remodeling my house and going through my son's personal belongings and memorializing the minutiae of his life and, at the same time, realizing that it's important to let go. A philosopher wiser than I said we're not truly free until we learn to rid ourselves of all our possessions. I've learned a lot from Mark. Now it's my job to follow through on those lessons and become the kind of person I want to be.