My image had always been very heterosexual, very straight. So it was a nice experience for me, a chance to clarify my own feelings about gay and lesbian civil rights.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
In many ways, my attachment to human freedom was completely compatible with my right to live freely as a homosexual.
Personally speaking, growing up as a gay man before it was as socially acceptable as it is now, I knew what it was to feel different, to feel alienated and to feel not like everyone else. But the very same thing that made me monstrous to some people also empowered me and made me who I was.
When I was in high school I got involved in the fringe theater scene in Chicago, and I met some openly gay people. I could see that it got better, that they were happy and loved and supported. I saw with my own eyes that it got better.
I'm really proud that the LGBT community has gotten behind me because, as I said, I am part of the community, so I do as much as I possibly can for our community and for our rights, so it's nice that everyone is supporting me as well.
I think it's interesting: What is the generational effect of the experience of being a gay person in America? For my generation, it was very difficult.
I was a closet straight. I think I wanted to be gay because I thought it was arty and interesting. And also, I was phenomenally shy with girls.
My own strong feeling was that the gay liberation movement really got national attraction in the truest sense of the word later in the '70s, in the '80s, and especially in the '90s.
I am pleased now that I have lived in a gay as well as a religious ghetto, though it hasn't been very comfortable. Taken together, their limitations cancel each other out and I have seen the world more kindly and more honestly.
As my audience grew more diverse, I started interjecting social justice advocacy and commentaries about LGBT equality, and it just kept growing more.
As a gay person, my life has been marginalized.
No opposing quotes found.