I was raised a nice Jewish boy in a Conservative household. Went to Camp Ramah. It's funny actually. I think I enacted my queerness there unconsciously. I was kind of one of the weirdos. I was on staff and definitely interested in alternatives to what that social structure was supposed to be.

[Bob Dylan] is a preacher but also a sinner; a poet but also a pitchman; authentic all-American but also invented persona.

Folk music had long been political but [Bob] Dylan's poetry took it to a new level.

People should support equality because of their religion not despite it. These are the values that openness, inclusion, diversity promote. And they're directly opposed to the kind of enforced closet of certain interpretations of religion.

The most recent incarnation of [Bob] Dylan has been the traveling journeyman/ charlatan who sings roots music, snarls dark lyrics that make "All Along the Watchtower" sound like a Disney tune, hosts an old-school radio show, and turns up in some unusual places, like ads for Chrysler and Victoria's Secret.

I thought that coming out was going to be the end of my religious life but actually it was the beginning. Because it only afterwards that I could be honest about who I was, what I wanted, how I understood spirituality.

In honor of his new Nobel, this hard-core Dylanophile wants to share with you a song or two from each of his many incarnations. Because you deserve to know.