Confrontation is needed here if there is to be any real change." Yet in spite of all the controversy about the new amended religious freedom law, there are still no statewide protections for LGBTs there. "Even David Brooks in a New York Times column said yes, we are right about Indiana, but we need to lower the tone otherwise we risk appearing unseemly. "The gay political establishment in Washington or in Hollywood believes we have won so much we can be magnanimous toward our opponents, otherwise we look played out or not respectable, with total victory just around the corner," Signorile added.
"In many states, you are outed the minute you get married, so you can expect to face discrimination and a fierce backlash. "If you are a lesbian in rural Oklahoma or a transgender woman in Alabama, you will have a different experience of homophobia than an urban white male in Washington, D.C., which will influence you whether the battle has been won or not," he said. He wanted to discover why so many LGBT people were declaring success in the face of such blatant discrimination, a phenomenon he terms "victory blindness" in his book. "My boyfriend and I kissed outside our home in New York City and a passing guy called us disgusting." "Many feel it is inevitable that we are going to get our full civil rights, that we have reached a tipping point, yet there is still so much to be done," Signorile, 54, said in an April 16 interview at his hotel. It was in 2009 just as major victories for LGBTs were starting to emerge, that he noticed a disconnect between LGBT equality wins and the horrible stories of discrimination listeners of his Sirius XM radio program were telling him about being fired just for being gay, as well as physical assaults. In San Francisco recently to promote his new book, It's Not Over, his manifesto on defeating homophobia, Signorile met with the Bay Area Reporter to discuss his latest campaign. Michelangelo Signorile is once again on a mission, similar to his outing crusade of the early 1990s, only now he wants to warn people that victory concerning full LGBT equality is not inevitable and homophobia seems as entrenched as ever.
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