My longest-term best friend is a gay man. We have been friends and playmates since we were literally toddlers, and these days we work at the same company. So I tend to take discrimination against gays in general, and against him and his partner specifically, very personally because it's like someone discriminating against my brother.

I'm very much of the live-and-let-live philosophy. I think that gays and lesbians ought to be afforded exactly the same rights that we straight people have. If we can marry, then they ought to be able to do so, too. To me, it's that simple.

Talk to a loved one who's gay for 5 minutes, and you learn real quickly that they're not gay by choice. Who in the world would choose to be that way? And they can't choose not to be gay any more than any of us straight folks could suddenly choose to stop being heterosexual and switch to the other team. I'm convinced that homosexuality is established either in utero or within the first 18 - 24 months of life before anyone has any control over it. I wish more people could be persuaded of this so they'd stop declaring it as a "wrong" or "sinful" lifestyle choice. IMO, it's neither wrong. Nor sinful. Nor is it a choice.