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When I was a kid, there were hardly any gay story lines or characters on television that I recall. Then when I was in college, 'Will & Grace' started up.

I grew up in a conservative small town, and the gay characters I saw on TV and in movies when I was growing up were all flamboyant and obnoxious and sometimes kind of annoying.

My films might have been queer - because I was - but they were not gay.

In the past, kids didn't tell their parents they were gay, so there were never the bust-ups. Some parents react so strongly to the news that their children are gay that the reaction is, 'Get out of our house.' There's a residue of old prejudices that are going to die hard.

People who were gay were pitied and ridiculed by my parents - they had no modern sense of people being allowed to be who they were.

It's not being marketed as a gay show by a gay person. It's just Ellen DeGeneres.

I do probably come down a little hard on a group of people I call the 'blue chip gays.' I mean people who have managed to become very, very famous and are still very famous partly through staying in the closet, like Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, Susan Sontag, Harold Brodkey and others.

When my brother-in-law, BIll Clinton, was elected, he had gay friends. That was a coming out.

When I started, there was more of a cultural assumption that many readers would find gay characters irrelevant or repugnant.

The public has always had affection for gay entertainers. The time was right for an out gay entertainer.