"In a cosmetic universe the most unbearable fact is to be different," John explains in Ulysses. For Innaurato, as much damage is caused by gay liberationists who insist that one perform one's sexuality in recognizably "proud" ways as by homophobes who disdainfully reduce gay men to effeminate, sex-hungry aberrations of nature.

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Innaurato's protagonists take pride in refusing to conform to anyone else's expectations of their sexuality, body size, or ethnicity. When time-traveling Al meets his nineteen-year-old grandfather shortly before the latter emigrates to the United States, they discuss the difficulty that others have pronouncing their family name, which both insist they will not change.

Television Writer, Journalist, Teacher, Opera Developer

In addition to his plays, Innaurato has also written successfully for television. He was nominated for an Emmy Award for his teleplay for the PBS Great Performances series, Verna: U. S. O. Girl (1978), which starred Sissy Spacek and William Hurt. In 1989 and 1990, he wrote scripts for the NBC/Lifetime series The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.

He also writes about opera and on popular culture for such publications as the New York Times, Vogue, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, and Opera News. He has taught playwriting at a number of universities, including Columbia University, the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Temple University, and Rutgers.

In 2005, Innaurato returned to Philadelphia to serve as a writer in residence at Philadelphia's Prince Music Theater, where he also co-produced and developed projects for the company, including the musical based on Gemini.

He currently serves as Artistic Director of Creative Development Projects at City Center Opera Theater in Philadelphia, where he has worked on the development of new operas such as Love/Hate by Jake Perla and Rob Bailis, and Michael Ching's Slaying the Dragon. He also works as a dramaturg and coaches young singers on acting and interpretive technique. In addition, he has directed several operas for the company.

Governments, publishers, editors, and even gay writers themselves have censored gay content in literature from the Renaissance to the present.

Since Stonewall, gay and lesbian drama has flourished, especially in the United States.

The musical has been a significant aspect of American gay male culture, manifesting itself both in diva worship and, more recently, in the presentation of openly gay characters and shows written by gay writers primarily for gay audiences.

There has always been homosexual involvement in American musical theatre and a homosexual sensibility even in straight musicals, and recently the Broadway musical has welcomed openly homosexual themes and situations.

Opera, an eclectic synthesis of voice, drama, music, costume, visual arts and spectacle, has played an integral role in queer culture since its development in seventeenth century Venice.

Although film may be a director's rather than a writer's medium, gay and lesbian screenwriters have made significant contributions to both mainstream and independent film.

Gay and lesbian theater companies attempt to create their own communities, while also fostering a sense of solidarity with the glbtq community and educating the larger society.

The American dramatist Edward Albee, whose career flourished in the 1960s and then waned as a result of homophobia, wrote plays with gay subtexts in which loving is the ultimate act of violence and violence is the most effective expression of love.

Quick-witted, roly-poly, sad-eyed clown James Coco proved one of the most versatile and successful American stage, film, and television actors from the late-1960s through the mid-1980s.

Actor-director Robert Drivas brought a provocative sexuality and an emotional intensity to his stage and screen performances at a time when the male body was being liberated as the object of the audience's gaze.

A fiercely comic playwright, as well as actor and screenwriter, Christopher Durang often incorporates gay themes and characters in his plays.

Although playwright, screenwriter, and director Moss Hart achieved great commercial success and popular acclaim, he suffered from severe depression and other emotional problems that were intensified, and possibly caused, by intense anxiety concerning his sexual orientation.

Among the most prolific and respected of contemporary costume designers in America, William Ivey Long has always been openly gay in his professional life.

An innovator in the "Theater of the Ridiculous," actor and playwright Charles Ludlam drew on many elements of camp and farce, but never allowed them to obscure the seriousness of his themes.

Texas-reared Terrence McNally, whose first play, And Things That Go Bump in the Night, was one of the great scandals of the 1964 New York season, emerged in the 1990s as America's most important gay playwright since Tennessee Williams.

Robert Patrick is a founding father of gay drama in America and an influence in the development of gay drama in England.

A pioneer in the development of contemporary gay theater, Doric Wilson was instrumental in Off-Off-Broadway theater in New York City from the early 1960s through the 1980s.

In his depictions of gay subjects, Lanford Wilson proved himself to be a powerful voice speaking of the lives of gay men.