"Our nation was founded on a bedrock principle that we are all created equal. The project of each generation is to bridge the meaning of those founding words with the realities of changing times—a never-ending quest to ensure those words ring true for every single American." – President Barack Obama, June 26, 2015

Growing up in a society where one breathed in homophobia from birth, where support for sexual minorities was either scarce or nonexistent, and where sanctions against same-sex desires were draconian, the wonder was that any queer person would come through the gauntlet mentally unscathed. Many did not. And yet, a surprising number of LGBT people not only managed to survive society's opprobrium but emerged on the other side with a healthy self-esteem and the firm conviction that homophobia – and not homosexuality - was the real problem.

However different the paths may have been that every gay person took to reach a positive, emotionally healthy destination, a single event often triggered the abrupt revelation that being queer was normal and healthy. Perhaps it was a first sexual experience, or falling in love. Such life-changing experiences can give an individual the strength to stand up against the homophobia that has caused them so much fear and shame in the past, and to come out of the dark world of the closet. This process can happen almost overnight, or it can stretch out for years.

I was 32 years old in 1988, living the life that society expected of me: married with children and a house in the suburbs. And I was utterly miserable. I'd known since I was 16 years old that I was attracted to men, but I couldn't summon the courage to accept that reality, much less act on it.

And then Lee died.

Lee was a co-worker, handsome and boyish at 28. Everyone in the office knew Lee was gay; his boyfriend sometimes dropped by to visit him. Lee kept his private life mostly to himself; I certainly didn't let anyone know that I had developed a bit of a crush on him.

By 1988, AIDS was killing gay men at a frightening pace. The drugs that today can keep the disease at bay were still years in the future. We suspected that Lee might have had AIDS because he was out sick so often. Once he was hospitalized for pneumonia, and even when he was in his office he was sometimes wracked by a deep cough. But he never discussed it, and none of us ever asked him about it.

Still, nothing prepared me for the day when one of our co-workers took me aside and told me that Lee was dying. We rushed over to the hospital where he was in an oxygen tent. I didn't get to visit him because the hospital was concerned that he had tuberculosis.

Lee's parents arrived at the hospital that day. They learned at the same time that their son was gay and had AIDS. That was pretty common back then.

Over the next couple of days, I met Lee's many friends for the first time. Some of them were suffering with AIDS as well. Lee's boyfriend was one of them. I learned how the gay community had banded together to fight this plague at a time when most of society seemed not to care. I was stunned and overwhelmed by the enormity of the tragedy. And also ashamed that I had stood aloof from it all.

On the day Lee died some of my office colleagues and I went to meet Lee's friends at his favorite hangout. It was my first time in a gay bar, and I felt stricken. Here I was carrying this secret around with me, while I was surrounded by openly gay men grieving the loss of one of their own. To them, I was an enlightened straight guy; meanwhile, I felt like a coward and a hypocrite. How could I stay safely hidden while this unimaginable struggle was taking place?

This was the moment that propelled me out of the closet. Within a week, I asked one of Lee's friends for a referral to a gay-friendly therapist. Within a few months, I came out and began to live life in a more honest way.

Coming out during that time was rarely simple or easy, and it certainly wasn't for me. But in the almost 30 years since then, I've never regretted it. I've never met any gay person who has regretted coming out. Not one.

Lee never knew I was gay. Or that his death changed my life forever.

Is It a Choice?

The question “Is it a choice?” became a hot topic during the 1990s as the debate over LGBT rights heated up. In 1993 Eric Marcus wrote a book with that title. The premise of the question was this: why should queer people be punished for something that is inborn, like being left-handed? If their attraction to members of their own sex is purely involuntary, surely they didn’t deserve society's approbation. Both sides rolled out what evidence they could find. Many right-wingers and evangelical Christians claimed homosexuality was a choice, and that LGBT people could be "cured" through therapy. Gays and their allies retorted that genetics, hormones and environment shaped a person's sexual orientation, and choice didn't play a role. Besides, they said, who in their right mind would choose to be gay in such a homophobic society, subjecting themselves to discrimination and even violence, if they could choose to be straight instead?

Well, although this topic still flares up now and then (Ben Carson, when he ran for president in 2015, again raised the choice issue), thankfully it gets little attention these days. In retrospect, this was a discussion we queers should never have participated in, because it took the issue of LGBT rights in an entirely wrong direction.

To start with, just debating the issue concedes an underlying point: that being queer is a bad thing: "We can't help it, we were born this way!" The proper response (and one which some did make), should have been: "Whether or not being gay is a choice is irrelevant. In a free country, people are free to pursue happiness in any way they please, so long as it isn’t illegal and doesn't infringe on anyone else's rights. And besides, why should we have felt the need apologize? Gay people deserve to be treated equally because we are equal.”

But reaching that kind of self-acceptance is like climbing a mountain for many LGBT people. In some ways, gay people have faced challenges unlike any other minority group. A black child, experiencing racism from classmates at school, at least could often find comfort and support at home from his family. But a gay child was just as likely to have experienced rejection at home as from strangers on the street.

Until 1973, homosexuality was still formally classified as a mental illness by the psychiatric profession. Religious groups almost unanimously considered it to be a sin. And as recently as the 1970s, being gay was a crime in 49 of the 50 states (only Illinois having repealed its "sodomy" laws for consensual adults, in 1961). Try having self-esteem when you're branded a sick, sinful criminal.

Up until the most recent generation, the oppression was nearly absolute. The punishments for being openly gay could be draconian - loss of job and income, eviction from one's home, even arrest and imprisonment. Plus the ever-present threat of violence. Small wonder that most LGBT people chose to stay deep in the closet.

Up until recently it’s been hard to accept oneself as queer is a homophobic society like ours. Reaching the point where one could actually celebrate one’s gay identity had long been a bridge too far for most of us.

But not anymore.

Coming of age shortly after the Stonewall Riots, I've had a ringside view of the almost incredible progress we've made in the past 40-plus years. Imagine going back to 1969 and telling people that in 2018 there would be same-sex marriage in every state, that laws criminalizing homosexuality would have been struck down everywhere, that openly gay people would be working in every field (even serving in the military), that gay politicians could be elected (and re-elected) even to the United States Senate. Nobody would have believed you.

How did we come so far, so fast? Although a handful of small pro-homosexual groups like the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis had formed in the 1950s, it was the explosive energy of the 1960s Civil Rights protests that truly galvanized the gay rights movement. Seeing African Americans taking to the streets emboldened gay people to organize and start to demand an end to their own discrimination. The frustration and rage against persecution that exploded in 1969 at the Stonewall Inn riots gave birth to American astronomer and gay activist Frank Kameny's famous motto: ”Gay Is Good.”

It was one of the most radical slogans ever uttered. Early on, a handful of gays had argued among themselves that there was nothing really wrong with them, that society's views were the problem. Alfred Kinsey's groundbreaking study in 1947 showed that homosexual activity among men was far more widespread than had been thought. Dr. Evelyn Hooker in 1957 released a study arguing that homosexuality was not a mental disorder, as there was no detectable difference between homosexual and heterosexual men in terms of mental health.

These groundbreaking reports were important steps, but nothing really changed until LGBT people felt empowered enough to take their emancipation into their own hands. That finally started to happen in the early 1970s as the first gay rights marchers filled the streets of New York, San Francisco, and cities in between. Groups with names like Gay Liberation Front, Lesbian Avengers, and Gay Activist Alliance sprung up overnight, organizing demonstrations to protest job and housing discrimination, and demanding the repeal of "sodomy" laws that criminalized our relationships.

It was the very openness of the protests that changed everything. No more hiding in the shadows, no more "passing" as straight. The phrase "coming out of the closet" meant leaving the shame behind. And all this coming out revolutionized the movement because it showed straight people everywhere that their friends, their co-workers, their children, their brothers and sisters were gay. Slowly, millions of straight allies were recruited into the struggle.

There was a backlash, of course. Such deep-seated prejudice guaranteed that some conservatives like Anita Bryant would lead the crusade to roll back the early gains of the gay rights movement. Groups like the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition sprung up and rallied their followers to oppose this new movement. And for a while they succeeded. But this was an idea whose time has come, the genie got out of the bottle and it wasn’t going back.