[Henry Rios] "I acquired my values through trial and error." What I'd meant when I told Paul my values were acquired through trial and error was that… - Michael Nava

[Josh, and Henry] He sat down again and looked at me. "I just really wanted to see you again." I looked at him. "Why?" "I've seen you before," he said. "I beg your pardon?" "Two years ago you gave a speech at a rally at UCLA against the sodomy law. Remember?" "I gave so many speeches that year," I said apologetically. He smiled. "I remember. Afterwards I came up and shook your hand." The smile faded and he looked at me gravely. "You gave me the courage to be who I am. But it didn't last." "Few of us come out all at once," I said, gently. "It's not the easiest thing to do." He shook his head and frowned. "I never came out at all." "We are at a gay bar," I said. "It's easy to come out in a bar," he said, "or in bed." A shadow crossed his face. "Are you alright?" He stared down at his hands and said, "No." There was a lot of pain in the little word. He grabbed my hand, clutching it tightly. "What is it Josh?" I asked. "He drew a shaky breath. "My life's a lie," he said. "No one knows who I really am, not my friends or my folks. I can't live this way anymore."

It was the mystery of my sexual nature that a body which was the mirror image of mine could be so compelling and feel so unfamiliar. When I was younger, it had seemed urgent to unravel this mystery because I believed that if it could be explained, the haters would stop hating us. Now I believed that they had no more right to an explanation about me than I did about them and, in any case, they would find other reasons to hate. Now I was simply grateful for his body beside me, known and unknown.

The campaign against gays is really a campaign against modern American society and against the freer women and men who populate and struggle in it. Gay rights attempts to structure that freedom with fairness so that we can get on with the business of building real and stable lives for all the different kinds of people and families inhabiting this country. Fairness is what this is about - not the sanctity of marriage or the "promotion" of homosexuality, but fairness.