(Laughter)

From my first moment of consciousness,

I knew that I was different.

To be honest,

I didn't look different.

Some people -- and I have to admit

that the evidence pointed to the fact that I was the same,

but I knew in my heart that I was different.

Different,

(Laughter)

more different,

(Laughter)

still different.

(Laughter)

It was a feeling.

An unconsciousness,

the subconscious.

It was something in my heart that I knew.

It was something, for ever and always, that was ... different.

There was a sense of something missing.

There was a sense of something else.

I knew that I was different.

When you are an identical twin,

people are always telling you that you are the same,

as if we didn't know already.

And then they start with the twin questions:

"Are you identical?"

"Is your name Patrick or are you Jimmy?"

"Do you guys always think alike?"

"Do you know what he's thinking all the time?"

"When he gets sick, do you get sick too?"

(Laughter)

"Did you use to play tricks on people?"

"Did you guys have a secret language?"

"Has anybody ever told you

that you guys really, really look alike?"

To which I would always reply:

"No, you're the first person who's ever said that."

(Laughter)

In Japan, there is an enormous amount of pressure

to be the same.

Pressure's so strong

that one of the words for "different", in Japanese,

chigai masu,

also means "wrong".

[DIFFERENT = WRONG]

And in school, in Japan,

like in schools probably everywhere else,

there's an enormous pressure to be the same,

and one of the favorite sports

is to point out who is different.

"He's too tall."

"She's so short."

"His English is terrible."

"Her English is too good."

"He's lived overseas."

"She's never been anywhere."

"Her mother is an American."

"His father is a foreigner."

But, what is "too tall"?

And what is "too short"?

And who is to say?

(Laughter)

Are these men too tall,

or am I too short?

Is this man too fat,

or am I too skinny?

(Laughter)

I had long sensed that I was different,

but I didn't quite know how.

And it was at the age of ten or eleven

that I started to figure out my "different".

Maybe it was the Altar Boys

or maybe it was the Boy Scouts,

but I always knew that I enjoyed the company of the other boys.

And I thought for ever and always

this would be the way of the world.

So, imagine my surprise when one day I discovered

that my identical twin brother, Jimmy, liked girls.

It was so unexpected.

It was such a surprise,

it was so different.

But if Jimmy was the first in our group to like girls,

he wasn't the last.

And, gradually, the other boys discovered girls too.

And, one day, I realized it wasn't Jimmy who was different,

or the other boys who were different,

but me.

Can you look at this picture and tell me

which one is the gay twin?

Long before I even had a word for it,

I intuited my "different",

and I was afraid of my "different",

and I lived in silence with my "different"

for a very long time.

For years,

for decades, I was afraid of my "different".

I was ashamed of my "different".

And I wanted so much to be the same

as my identical twin brother, Jimmy.

And I was afraid, too, that someday

somebody would discover my "different".

And one day, in 1966,

in an all-boys catholic school in upstate New York,

I was walking down a hall and a boy pushed me!

And shouted: "Fagot!"

And then, that left such an image in my head,

that, to this day, 47 years later,

I can still see his sneering face,

I can still hear the hurled word: "Fagot!"

And in the days to come,

there were more hurled words, more pushes:

queer, nancy, pansy, fairy, fag.

And I thought, "How did he know?

How could he know?

What did I do wrong?

How can I make this stop?"

Flash forward almost twenty years.

It's 1984 and I'm a new diplomat with a foreign service.

The chief of security briefed my foreign service class

and he said, "There's no room for homos in the foreign service.

If you're a queer, you're out."

And I thought not much had changed.

I had gone from being bullied in an all-boys catholic high school

to being bullied in a US government workplace.

I was still different,

and, in the eyes of my society and my government,

different meant wrong.

But that was then, and now is now,

and much has changed in my lifetime.

In 1969, a group of gay men,

in a bar in New York city, called The Stonewall Inn,

fought back. For the first time, they fought back

when the police tried to arrest them

just because they were gay.

The Stonewall uprising became an iconic event

and then followed more iconic events

and more iconic people.

There were pride parades,

Harvey Milk,

Barney Frank,

Don't Ask Don't Tell.

There was the death of the Defense of Marriage Act,

the death of Don't Ask Don't Tell.

In 2004, my home state of Massachusetts

became the first state to institute marriage equality.

And, just yesterday,

the state of New Jersey became the fourteenth state

to allow gay marriage, marriage equality for LGBT citizens.

(Applause)

And equality is on the rise.

I stand before you, a sixty-year-old gay man.

I am still different,

but I understand my "different"

and I appreciate my "different".

My society and my government

now recognize and respect my "different".

I am equal, I am married.

Here I am with my husband of eleven years,

Emerson Kanegusuke.

He''s here in the front row to support me,

and I love him so much

and I am happy.

(Applause)

We are happy.

The next time somebody looks at you

and points and sneers and says, "You're different!",

you say, "Yes!"

(Laughter)

(Applause)

"You are absolutely right.

I am different, I am unique, sui generis,

I am one of a kind,

they broke the mold when they made me.

I am the only one like me.

I am the only one like me in this room,

in this city, in this university, on this planet,

in this universe, at this time,

or any time, for all time,

I am different!

(Applause)

And so are you.

You are the only you in this room tonight.

You are the only you like you

who ever will be for any time, and for all time.

And so are you,

and so are you,

and so are you,

and that tall guy up in the back there, with a hat,

and that woman with a dog in the back there,

and the boy with a baseball cap.

You are all different!

We are all different!

Different!

(Laughter)

And now, one thing that draws us all together,

the one thing that connects everybody in this room and on this planet,

the one thing that makes us all the same

is that we are, each and everyone of us,

in our own, unique way,

different!

I promise, 'til the end of my days,

to be different

and uniquely me.

Like snowflakes, no two of us are alike.

We will all, each in our own way,

continue to be different.

I promise to respect your "different",

and I ask you to respect mine.

We must embrace "different",

because, in the end, that and that alone

is what will make us uniquely and truly human.

Thank you.

(Applause)