I remember going to a Manhattan party at which I didn't know any of the other guests – none of whom knew I'd be there – and seeing, on the bed, along with everybody's coats, no fewer than four copies of A Place at the Table.

My book – and I am only saying this to make a point – was for several months running the #1 bestseller in America's gay bookstores, those busy, vibrant temples of gay cultural life that thrived during those couple of decades after Stonewall. This fact has long since been conveniently dropped down the memory hole, but in 1993 virtually all of the leaders of the gay political establishment were fiercely opposed to the idea of gay marriage, and they vilified as sellouts those of us who supported it. The book represented a challenge both to anti-gay prejudice and to the monolithic, marginalized notion of gay identity that was promoted – and enforced – by the gay cultural and political left of the day, which insisted that gays who, say, wanted to join the military, or attend church, or who lived in committed relationships were aping the straight majority and betraying the queer nation, probably because they were “self-hating” or “sex-negative” or both. But let's begin by going back twenty years – to 1993, when I published a book entitled A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society.