As a gay man, I think the role of culture is central to how you change politics - culture is politics.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
To me, politics is culture. I became a journalist, and later a filmmaker, to get to know my new country and my volatile place in it as a gay, undocumented Filipino-American.
Gay TV has been immensely important in transforming American culture in a more gay-positive direction.
The media has gone through lots of things that make it a less foreign thing to have your lead character be gay.
I don't feel, finally, that my politics are entirely determined by the fact that I'm a gay man.
Gay culture is surviving and thriving. Some activists believe the recent rise in homophobic violence might be a gauge of the success of positive gay images.
Paradoxically, since gay men rarely have gay parents, cultural transmission must come from friends or strangers (a problem since the generations so seldom mix in gay life).
What gay culture is before it is anything else, before it is a culture of desire or a culture of subversion or a culture of pain, is a culture of friendship.
Being a woman and being gay is really a unique position in our society. I know in my experience of activism, oftentimes it makes a difference if something is women-focused. It's likely to get the attention of women much more easily.
A lot of what used to be known as gay culture - broadly speaking, homoeroticism and being camp - has been brought into mainstream culture. I think we should be moving to an era where it's just sex.
Really, when it comes to gay rights, there's two wars going on. The first war is political. But the culture war is over.