All over the country, they're reading about me, and the story doesn't center on me being gay. It's just about a gay person who is doing his job.

Burst down those closet doors once and for all, and stand up and start to fight.

All young people, regardless of sexual orientation or identity, deserve a safe and supportive environment in which to achieve their full potential.

To sit on the front steps — whether it's a veranda in a small town or a concrete stoop in a big city — and to talk to our neighborhoods is infinitely more important than to huddle on the living-room lounger and watch a make-believe world in not-quite living color.

Freedom is too enormous to be slipped under a closet door.

Out of the bars and into the streets!

I was born of heterosexual parents. I was taught by heterosexual teachers in a fiercely heterosexual society. Television ads and newspaper ads — fiercely heterosexual. A society that puts down homosexuality. And why am I a homosexual if I'm affected by role models? I should have been a heterosexual. And no offense meant, but if teachers are going to affect you as role models, there'd be a lot of nuns running around the streets today.