In partnership with Wendy Wasserstein, Long planned to launch a line of ready-to-wear fashions for women. Although their 2002 show was well received and brought orders from retailers including Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, and Saks Fifth Avenue, they abandoned the enterprise when the coordination of manufacturing and distribution proved to be impractical. Long continues to design for private clients.

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Architectural Restoration and Preservation

Despite the great demands of his design work, Long also finds time for his passion, architectural restoration and preservation. He has restored twelve houses and is the president of the Eastern Seaboard Trust, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to historic preservation and economic development in the small town of Seaboard, North Carolina, where one of his Long ancestors settled in 1676 and the Ivey family is also well established.

Long owns five houses in Seaboard, as well as a farm, a storefront building, two grain silos, and an abandoned public school that his father once attended.

In 2001 Long brought in a team of students of urban planning at North Carolina Central University to canvass the residents about their opinions regarding the development of the town. He then had graduate students from the College of Design at North Carolina State University lead public discussions of the findings.

The community chose to turn the storefront into a doctor's clinic. The North Carolina State students volunteered to return to refurbish it.

When hiring vendors for his projects, Long insists on giving jobs to local firms. He has been working on the restoration of the school building to provide Seaboard residents with a gymnasium, classrooms, and an auditorium. He has turned an old smokehouse into a popular gathering place, a pool hall called the Swinging Ham.

For his consistent support of his home state, Long received the Roanoke Island Historical Association's Morrison Award in 1992 and the North Carolina Award in 2004.

Long has decorated his houses with furniture owned by his family since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and since 1998 he has hosted a picnic in Seaboard for the Long and Ivey families and their friends that now brings over six hundred people together. Invitations to the event are highly prized.

In 2006 Long stated, "It's encouraging to have [the family's] things around. I have a great sense of history, which I learned from them. I think that's why in the South, you hold onto things. Because they remind you." In his case, the reminders are a mixture of pride and pain, with pride winning the day.

Bachelor and Activist

Long has never found a life partner. He calls himself "a bachelor in the old sense of the word, meaning I flirt, I have many close relationships, but then I come home and like to read my book."

His friend playwright Paul Rudnick has remarked, "I think to a certain extent that the world is William's significant other. That's why the projects keep expanding. You wonder if there's a sadness or a lack there, but it's hard to imagine him being satisfied with one person, one Tony Award, one town. But he's not that old, so you never know. I would love to see who that match might be--but they're probably buried in Westminster Abbey."

Long's candor about his homosexuality itself amounts to a kind of quiet activism. He has participated in Live Out Loud's series of panel discussions that give glbtq youth the opportunity to speak with "accomplished LGBT people who are passionate about their life's work, who are making a difference in the community, and who are interested in sharing their inspirational stories."

In 2002, Long was named one of Out Magazine's 100 most influential gay people and gay allies.

The association between homosexuality and fashion is multifaceted, ranging from the role of clothes as signifiers of sexual orientation to the immense contributions gay men have made at all levels of the fashion industry.

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.

Set and costume design for stage and film are fields that have attracted a large number of talented gay men and lesbians.

For most of his life, the specter of the closet lurked threateningly behind the glamorous and often brash public image of American composer Leonard Bernstein.

Accomplished playwright, actor, composer, and lyricist, Sir Noël Coward was also a singer and cabaret performer; he dominated the British stage between the world wars, then reoriented his career in the direction of America.

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

A proponent of the "diva musical," Broadway composer and lyricist Jerry Herman made homosexuality the undisguised subject of La Cage aux Folles but he did so just as gay culture lost its need of a diva to voice its concerns.

Playwright Albert Innaurato's plays are as remarkable for the marginalizing ethnic identity, sexual orientation, and body image of their characters as they are for the author's refusal to adopt politically correct attitudes.

Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb are the musical poets of the poymorphous perverse; their works glorify the creativity inherent in sexual ambivalence and celebrate unorthodox forms of political activism.

Highly-acclaimed actor Nathan Lane is not only openly gay himself, but has portrayed gay characters in several plays and films.

Out American playwright, novelist, and screenwriter Paul Rudnick brings a gently subversive wit to all of his projects.

Composer Marc Shaiman and lyricist and director Scott Wittman, partners in life and collaborators in theater, film, and television projects, have a long list of credits in the entertainment industry.

World-renowned illusionists Siegfried and Roy are noted not only for their spectacular Las Vegas shows that feature their trademark white tigers as well as other exotic animals, but also for their roles as camp icons.

One of the most innovative talents of the musical theater in the second half of the twentieth century, Stephen Sondheim has only indirectly reflected his homosexuality in his work.

A director, writer, producer, and photographer, John Waters became well known in the early 1970s through his filmic collaboration with actor--and drag queen--Divine.

Conflicted over his own sexuality, Tennessee Williams wrote directly about homosexuality only in his short stories, his poetry, and his late plays.