Thanks, droughtquake. Very insightful. Things have improved so much just the past few years. Young gay men and women have much more support. The It Get's Better campaign that started in 2010 opened the door for more gay and lesbians to finally come out. Today, there are thousands of positive role models. The final victory was the Supreme Court ruling for same sex marriages. When I first started writing ten years ago, that wasn't even imaginable. In fact, much of what you discussed wasn't even on the radar. Great strides have been made, but that doesn't mean there isn't more to do.
When I started writing, my main objective was to let young gay teens know that it was okay to be gay. Every story I have written stresses that fact- you can be happy and find love and acceptance. Now, I feel my work has been completed. With our society becoming more tolerant and accepting, there isn't much more that I can say. I told a reader once that sometime in the future, young gay men and women would have trouble identifying with the problems that I and many other writers describe in our stories. They will be just reflect a period of recorded history. Hopefully, that day is on the horizon.