The reality is that the "gayborhoods" are going away. It's because of many factors, including the internet and increased acceptance, but mostly it's the cost of housing.

There was no way to have a decent life and to be gay. So I was terrified that I was going to be caught, and I had already experienced quite a bit of bullying. And, you know, I just thought that only misery lay ahead, and that if I - when I got caught that would be the solution. I wish I could say that was a thing of the past. But, you know, it's not.

The joy with which we denigrate each others' efforts, I hate that.

If we [gays] want to be equal under the law, we must now - as the great heroes of the Civil Rights movement of 1963 and 1964 showed us - turn our attention to the federal government.

I am old school, I joined the gay liberation movement in 1972. If you had told me in 1972 that in the year 2009 I would be campaigning for the right to join the army or get married I think I would have started dating women at that time.

I am not proud to be gay any more than I am proud to be right handed or to breathe oxygen.

Since the industrial revolution, cities, and especially the inner cities, were the places for the newly arrived. Voluntary immigrants seeking economic betterment, refugees, the bohemians, the artists - all of those people were crammed into densely populated neighborhoods and tenements. And as people climbed up the economic ladder they moved out, which really accelerated with the "white flight" phenomenon in the '60s and '70s.