That same day he learned that the copyright owner of "Three's Company" had sent a cease-and-desist letter to the play's producers charging that Mr. Adjmi had infringed on the copyright by borrowing so many elements from the TV series, including its premise about a man who pretends to be gay to live with two female roommates.
Questioned as to whether he was likening being gay to bestiality, he continued: "Homosexuality is one of the sins for us and it means we should not teach our kids that sin is okay".
In a single week, he took each of the handful of reporters on the metropolitan desk whom he knew to be gay out to lunch, one at a time.
When he realized that he was gay, at thirteen, he tried to bargain with God: if he studied hard and got good grades, maybe God would take his desires away.
I waited with bated breath for someone to tell me that their family taught them that it was wrong to be gay, that two men shouldn't be together or two women shouldn't be together.
But I was reminded of the fact that it is still hard to be gay by three new books that I recently read.
"If one of them is gay and it's genetically caused, the other one ought to be gay one hundred per cent of the time!" he said.
I had a rainbow flag on my shoulder [inscribed with], in Russian writing, 'It is okay to be gay.' And two people stopped me, asking me to give them my rainbow.
While prejudice is still a daily danger for transsexuals, gay school schoolchildren, sex workers and many, many others, it really is easier than ever to be gay the more one resembles the average member of the parliamentary Conservative party – white, male, wealthy and raised in privilege.
After Tom was revealed to be gay during season four, M. C. Gainey stated that "anytime you've got a group of people, somebody's got to be marching to a different drummer - that would be Tom Friendly".
