Benson knows there will be some conservatives, as well, who question him now. To them, he said he would just direct them to all that he’s written and said since he was in college at Northwestern University. “I do my best to shrug it off and just go on living my life.”

And, despite the disagreements Benson likely will have with some gay liberals, he acknowledges the importance of the progress that has been made on gay rights.
“I do not lose sight of how historically fortunate I am to be living in this country in this era, given who I am,” he said. As for his own path, he explained, “This is the final stage for me, personally, on this journey, where I have been incredibly fortunate to have been able to undertake each step of this process completely on my own terms.”

And now, he felt that it was time to let people know that his voice — already a part of the political discussion — was that of a gay man.

“Because we’re writing about it in the book, I did not want to cede control of that information to someone else,” he explained. He wanted to talk about this himself, rather than someone else, because he didn’t want it “to seem as though I was hiding or being untruthful or ashamed — and that hasn’t been my mentality at all. So, for a number of reasons, it seemed like the time had arrived and this is how we did it.”