I go back to the parallels with 1963, 1964 when white America really became aware of the brutality of segregation, the cruelty of the apartheid system which existed in the south. Then white people began to get on the freedom buses and travel to the south and be part of the voter registration drives and they... some of them were beaten and some of them were murdered but they stood with the African-American community and the civil rights movement. It's time for straight people to do that today and it is time for gay people to insist that they do that today.

We spend countless hours talking about people's feelings and issues that aren't going to change anything.

There are places in America that have not just protected middle-class neighborhoods but reduced homelessness. Even places like Houston have been able to reduce homelessness among veterans. It's a pretty shameful situation.

When I was saving pills to kill myself, I thought there was no hope. I thought my life was over because I was a homosexual.

When you lose the gayborhoods, you lose the political power that comes when you're concentrated in precincts, and you also lose the cultural vitality.

If I had to say what my one greatest achievement is, it's that I lasted, and I'm still happy. I hope that comes through.

I was bullied pretty badly especially in middle school. High school was not as bad as middle school, but I was not a macho kid at all. And the kids saw me as different from a very, very early age.