I treat people who write me the way my friends and I all treat each other when we go to each other for advice, which is sometimes with supreme cruelty. I think that's what helps the advice sink in. If somebody comes at you with both barrels, the first shot opens your head, and the second shot allows the advice to get lodged inside.

A certain tiny percentage of everyone is gay.

Sedaris, in his essay in the It Gets Better book, writes that when he was growing up nobody called him gay because you might as well have called him a warlock. Nobody knew what gay was.

A huge part of what animates homophobia among young people is paranoia and fear of their own capacity to be gay themselves.

A lot of people think that telling people you're gay is something someone might say just to get attention.

The truly revolutionary promise of our nation's founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H.

I don't write about my life in my column.