A century ago, people laughed at the notion that we were descended from monkeys. Today, the individuals most offended by that claim are the monkeys.

Victory [over homophobia] may require five or maybe 20 years. Yet I have no doubt that "don't ask, don't tell" and same-sex adoption bans will be as unspeakable and inexplicable to my grandchildren as counting a slave as three-fifths of a human being.

If freedom means anything at all, it is the right to primacy in regard to sexuality, reproduction, medical care and death.

Maybe that is the greatest of wonders: that we can be shaped so much by those we've known closely, and equally by those we've never known at all - and that we too can change the world long after we've left it.

Marriage is like a series of opposing reflections, inverse images getting ever smaller like nesting dolls, each one of your trying to squeeze yourself smaller to fit inside the hopes of the other, until one of you cracks or stops existing.

The most dangerous ideas are not those that challenge the status quo. The most dangerous ideas are those so embedded in the status quo, so wrapped in a cloud of inevitability, that we forget they are ideas at all.

The only thing more difficult than persuading someone else to start having sex with you is persuading yourself to stop.