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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.

Even though I'm from the Midwest, the majority of my life has been spent on the coasts where being gay wasn't really much of a conversation.

One result of An American Family was that I became a gay role model.

As a gay person, my life has been marginalized.

When I was growing up I didn't know what it meant to be a happy, successful grown-up gay person, and now I do. I feel like I'm setting an example for people everywhere.

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.

The fact is, I'm gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn't be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud.

Originally I was opposed to gay assimilation and targeted gay marriage as just another effort on the part of gays to resemble their straight neighbours.

With 'Fellow Travelers,' I think I was consciously trying to imagine what my own life as a gay man might have been like if I'd been born exactly 20 years earlier.