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.

It was a pleasure to be a gay eyesore.

If there is a gay uniform, the differences are in how each man coordinates the details: the brand and cut of the jeans, the design of belts and boots, the haircut, the number and size of earrings.

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.

I wore a woman's antique fur jacket to my high school junior prom.

I am now faced with mortality. Definitely not the most generous move.

As I was coming out of the closet, our car was hurtling over an embankment.

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

Sexuality is a private matter; some believe that broadcasting it destroys the very things that make it sacred.

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.

Gay culture is surviving and thriving. Some activists believe the recent rise in homophobic violence might be a gauge of the success of positive gay images.

Coming out is a means of redefining oneself, of claiming membership in a lifestyle and a social order with distinct values. Chief among these values is honesty.

Proclaiming a sexual preference is something that straight men never really have to bother with.

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.

Coming out involves varying degrees of difficulty that are affected by class, race, religion, and geography.

Perhaps there is no agony worse than the tedium I experienced waiting for Something to Happen.

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

I had been found in a mud puddle at 4:30 in the morning.

I believed I was invincible.

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

For the naysayers that claimed 'American Family' revealed us to be vacant, unloving, uncaring morons of the materialistic '70s, this image will be proven wrong when Mom and Dad remarry... Make no mistake. This is not to emphasize the sadness of my demise but rather emphasize the love of my family and friends.

Gay culture is in a coming-out process of its own. From out of the closets in the '60s, the culture moved onto the disco floors of the '70s and through the hospital wards of the '80s and onwards to the streets.

I don't know if hep C is called 'the quiet killer,' but it easily could be, so unnoticeably does it nestle into your body before crankin' up the screws and letting you race to figure out what's going on.

In 1970, television ate my family. The Andy Warhol prophecy of 15 minutes of fame for any and everyone blew up on our doorstep.

Scrawling 'I'm gay' in lipstick on your parents' bedroom mirror may demonstrate a personal signature of the highest style, but is not particularly sensitive to their feelings. Upon hearing me utter those words almost twenty years ago, my own mother did what and self-respecting middle-class mom would do: went directly into a seizure.

The bulk of my learning - if I may call it such - has come within the past three months, after I became a part of the fragile body of patients who make up an AIDS hospice. Here, surrounded by teams of supportive nurses, attentive doctors, and interns, one gently comes upon his own strengths and shortcomings.

Too pop for punk, too 'old school' for the New Wave, Mumps were a '70s era New York rock band, out of time.

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.

Younger workers should have more freedom to build their retirement nest egg.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.

Criticism of government finds sanctuary in several portions of the 1st Amendment. It is part of the right of free speech. It embraces freedom of the press.

There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream.

So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.

Every dictator is an enemy of freedom, an opponent of law.

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

Into every soul, however purged and fenced, evil appears to have as much freedom of entrance as God Himself.

To stop terrorists before the strike, we must do three things: deny them entry into the country, curtail their freedom of action inside the country, and deprive them of material and moral support from within the country.

Love and freedom are vital to the creation and upbringing of a child.

Is anarchism desirable? Well, who does not seek freedom? What man, unless willing to declare himself in bondage, would care to call any control agreeable? Think about it!

American and Israel share a special bond. Our relationship is unique among all nations. Like America, Israel is a strong democracy, a symbol of freedom, and an oasis of liberty, a home to the oppressed and persecuted.

The transfer is a monumental occasion as the Iraqi people take control of their government and their future and forge ahead with creating a society governed by the tenets of life, liberty and freedom.

When people say 'What are underground comics?' I think the best way you can define them is just the absolute freedom involved... we didn't have anyone standing over us.

We must provide all kinds of freedom, personal and economic, to all Iraqis. I will fight for that.

There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.

Native Americans are the original inhabitants of the land that now constitutes the United States. They have helped develop the fundamental principles of freedom of speech and separation of powers that form the foundation of the United States Government.

In America it's live by the sword of freedom of expression and be will to die by it as well.

A political prisoner is someone who is out fighting for his or her people's rights and freedom and is imprisoned for that alone.