When you've grown sick of reading and bug-eyed from watching TV, when your friends are all visited out, no words can adequately praise the link to the outside world provided by your parents and family.

My gayness became quietly accepted and, shock of all shocks, life went on.

I believed I was invincible.

My reasons for declaring a sexual preference had to do less with the pursuit of personal freedom than with the lust for pure shock value.

One result of An American Family was that I became a gay role model.

As anyone who is gay will confirm, being that way is not something you become, it is a set of emotional and physical responses that just are.

David Bowie and Boy George created a safely contained theatrical expression of gay style.