Earlier today, on the Howard Stern Show, I came out of the closet publicly. Something some of you, many of you might have suspected. Yes, I am gay. No longer am I ashamed of how I was created. Being gay is not a choice you make, And while some of you may question why I lived in the closet, through high school, college, and my career - let me put it very simply with 2 answers: 1) my mother told me years ago she would disown me if I was gay. 2) the bigoted society we live in where we celebrate that we are so open-minded that we can elect a black President, on the very same day gays and lesbians have their rights to marry revoked in California. Looks like the civil rights movement still has a ways to go.

I'm still the same me you know and hopefully love. You won't see me marching in any parades, buying up all the Judy Garland albums, or waving a rainbow flag in everyone's face. That's not who I am. What you will see me doing is giving my whole-hearted support to an organization that means the world to me. The Matthew Shepard Foundation. (http://www.matthewshepard.org) When Matthew Shepard was killed in 1998, he was only a few months older than me. We were both college students. We were both gay. I remember being in the computers labs at NYU logging on to work on a paper and reading the news of Matthew's murder on CNN.com. I broke down. I wondered could that happen to me? I was at one of the most liberal colleges in the country, but thought it could happen to anyone who was openly gay. His tragic murder made me want to hide further in the closet than I already was. And while I learned the news of Matthew Shepard's death sitting in a computer lab, another horrific hate crime occurred 10 years later in ironically - a computer lab.

This past February, Lawrence King, a 15-year gay high school student in California gave a male classmate a valentine. Days later, that same classmate walked into a computer lab, pointed a gun at Lawrence's head and shot him twice in the head, killing him. (http://rememberlarry.com) So 10 years later, things have not changed much. I strongly encourage you - if you are a religious person which some of you are - start to question yourself and your beliefs, why two people in love who happen to be the same sex is so awful? What is it that scares people so much that people like Sarah Palin supports a federal ban on gay marriage. I've got news for you Sarah Palin, I support a federal ban on letting your daughter sleep around at age 17 and getting knocked up, then parading them around like teen pregnancy is something to be proud of. Thank God the voters of this country rose up and left you in Alaska where I hope you stay for many, many years to come.

Take a minute of your time and look at the Human Rights Campaign's list of hate crimes from the past decade. http://www.hrc.org/documents/A_Decade_of_Violence.pdf Read about the gay homeless man in Richmond, VA whose head was severed and left in a public park. Learn about the free baseball bats that were offered for a gay bashing on a Los Angeles college campus. Or even the Wilmington, North Carolina man who was dragged out of a bar and beaten by 3 Marines. 3 MARINES! Maybe that should be expected though in a military where if you're gay, you're gone. Boy if that policy isn't antiquated, I don't know what is. Maybe I'm sounding a little preachy here but think for a second about 9/11. Maybe you knew someone we lost in that terrible tragedy. Think about how badly we wanted to capture Osama Bin Laden and make him pay for what he did. Now think about our government letting go 26 Arabic translators because of their sexual orientation. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6824206) These are not even men and women on the battlefield. Just translators sitting in offices dismissed because of who they sleep with at night.

We live in a society where legalized discrimination occurs on a daily basis, but we look the other way. If being gay is reason enough to be discharged from the army. Why not segregate gays everywhere else? Let's give gays their own water fountains, and how about a gay section on the public transit bus. When our own government sends the message that being gay is something worth being fired for, then it's hard to understand how they can enforce an anti-discrimination policy protecting gay and lesbians in the workplace.

My main source of notoriety from the Howard Stern Show is my voice - a very unique voice. And it's that voice I'm going to use to speak out against the things I believe are wrong. Speak out against hate crimes, speak out against the out-dated "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy, speak out against Proposition 8, and speak out against organized religions where you condemned for being gay. It's amazing the church ostracizes you if you're gay, but it's ok for hundreds of priests to fondle, molest, and rape children and then pay off their victims years later.

My coming out has nothing to do with a lie detector test on the Stern Show, or going to a Madonna concert, or the fights that Artie and I have had over the years. It's about doing what right for me, and doing what's right for every gay man or woman out there. I shouldn't be ashamed of how I was created, no more than I should be ashamed of being born with a certain hair or eye color. Being gay is something you're born with, not something you choose. Who in their right mind, would choose to be treated like a 2^nd class citizen?

Michael Morales

December 1, 2008