Tell me, what is the bullshit?

Well, there’s some mail that I could do without. There were the protests. I mean, it’s one thing to be protested because people disagree with a choice you’ve made or a position you hold. I think that’s fair game. But when somebody protests you just for existing, it’s just, like, come on, man. Like, you’re protesting the wrong thing.

We got married in a church, which was very important to me, in South Bend. And a guy started showing up just with this sign, “Gay marriage is a sin,” or something like that. He just kind of patrols the block as we’re going into services, kind of coming and going. I mean, he doesn’t hurt anybody, but it’s irritating. And I remember, at one point, talking to the pastor’s wife, who observed, like, “If we’re here on religious grounds, shouldn’t he be here to hear the scripture and come pray with us? We’re nice. We’ll have coffee after.”

Is the good or the bad geographically specific? The receptivity, the acceptance, the decency—in any way geographically located?

Probably the opposite of the way you might think. I think that, in more conservative areas, it probably has special meaning to people. When we’re in . . . I love going to rural and conservative areas, partly because I think there’s a lot more of a conversation to be had than you would think with typically conservative voters about why they should vote for me, just in general. But also, when you see this phenomenon of people who—it’s just hard to come out. Look, I was aware, even when I was in the process myself of coming out, that if I were a mayor in some U.S. states I wouldn’t even have to bother to come out. You know, I’d just—there’d be some rubber-chicken dinner like you go to every other day when you’re a mayor, and I’d bring my date, and it would be a dude, and everybody would notice, and that would be that, right? But not in Indiana. Like, I had to figure out a whole process. And so, in that sense, it is very different.

Obama thought that on balance. He said, “Of course, there were loads of people who are racist. There are loads of people who are—they don’t quite know it, but they’re going to vote against me for racial reasons.” But, on balance, it was a positive for him. That’s him talking, not me. What about being gay, as a purely raw electoral thing—do you think it could be a positive, or is it on balance a negative? I hate to put it that way, but you’re in the midst of a Presidential race.

Well, there’s only one way to find out for sure. But I will say I assumed that it would take a big bite out of my support in South Bend, but the next election, the reëlection, I actually got my highest vote ever. I got eighty per cent of the vote—after coming out. There was such a long part of my life where I assumed that this one thing could multiply everything else by zero, in terms of my chance to have an impact—at least an impact through public life—and learned to accept that and accept that that might happen.

And so talk about God having a sense of humor. Having spent all this time afraid that that would mean I don’t get to have impact, here I am reminded daily by people I meet on the trail that this thing turns out to be one of the main ways that I do get to have impact. And that, I think, is also one of the reasons why, when you’re tying yourself up in knots about who to try to be when you’re on the public stage, the best thing you can do, the best thing you can offer, is just to be yourself.

It wasn’t, say, ten years ago, where, for most Americans, the idea of gay marriage going through the Supreme Court, however narrow the margin, might have been unimaginable. Here we are. In terms of policy for L.G.B.T.Q. rights, what’s ahead of us? What’s left to do?

Oh, I mean, well, one of the risks is that, because we had this amazing advancement with marriage equality, people might think that the struggle is mostly over, and it’s just not. We need a federal equality act to make sure that workplace housing and other discrimination for sexual orientation and gender identity cannot be allowed in this country. And we need it right away.

I mean, there’s an outright war on transgender Americans going on right now, and it has to end. Not just a trans military ban but access to health care, what’s going on in the criminal-justice system. So many ways that we need to support trans Americans. There’s a lot of work to be done around youth homelessness, around H.I.V. We are nowhere near finished, but I think we also have a moment to make alliances that would not have been thought possible just a few years ago.

How do you mean?

Well, for one thing, watching what’s happening among people of faith who have been taught, sometimes, two sets of things. And one of them has to do with certain conventions around sexual orientation and around family and around sex. And the other, which has a lot more going for it in scripture, is a set of things about compassion and love and care and support for the marginalized and the outcasts, wherever you find them. And watching the process of this winning out over that, even if it’s a halting and uneven and messy process, is a really beautiful thing, because it is—to borrow a very religious word—I think, in some ways, conversion. And that’s one example of how this has been able to really change a lot of people.

The other thing that strikes me is that we’re in a moment when different patterns of exclusion are overlapping right now. Because, just about any way you could possibly be excluded, whether it’s over disability or over gender identity, it’s being made worse under this President. And I don’t mean to draw equivalencies. There are so many differences about every different reason people have been singled out or discriminated against. But I will say that there’s also this chance for solidarity that I’m seeing, that my own personal piece of this story, as part of the L.G.B.T.Q. community, has opened my eyes to.

One of the best moments on this whole campaign was a teen-ager—I think she was maybe sixteen—came up to me and let me know that that my candidacy—this was in Iowa, in a back yard—she said my campaign let her go to school and be who she was and stand up for herself and not be ashamed of having autism. And I thought, Wow, we’re really getting somewhere now. Because what that meant is this campaign spoke to her in a way that I’d never guessed or would have known and lets her know it’s O.K. for her to be herself. And if everybody who has been on any side of a fence of exclusion—which, look, in some way, shape, or form, is all of us—can tap into that as a reason to support others not quite like us, that could bring about an incredibly needed conversion for our country, and could help us get to that era that we are hoping to open up right now.