A new way of doing things.

My 15-year-old niece was sitting across from me in a Venice, Calif., restaurant one sunny Saturday. As we ate our lunches, she suddenly began talking about several of her classmates in high school and some of the "not very nice" things she's heard them say when referring to people they suspect are gay or lesbian. Frankly, I was a little surprised that we were discussing "gay issues" at all. Although I have always been very close to her and her sister (age 19), we've had practically no chitchats about "auntie being gay." I don't mean that the two of them don't know. That's always been very clear. We just don't talk about it. At least, we hadn't.

"They just say all this mean stuff," she continued about her classmates, between bites of food. "They use the word `gay' for anyone who's different. And that person may not even be gay; it's just a word. They say `gay' like it means `weird.' Like `Oh, she's so gay!' They say other stuff too, like `fag' and `faggot.'"

I asked her how she feels about them talking this way in front of her. "Oh, it bothers me," she admitted. "I don't stress about it unless it's one of my friends who's saying it. But that doesn't happen anymore. My friends don't talk that way in front of me. They used to say things like that when they were in my presence, and I gave them trouble. Now they know not to. They think I'm a pain, but they watch what they say. They call me `the homo police.' It's kinda funny. But I don't mind."

The homo police?! Talk about cutting-edge ways to educate people about the effects of peer pressure and prejudice. Somewhere, somehow, on a high school campus in California, a 15-year-old objected to mindless name-calling, got labeled "the homo police," kept her friendships anyway, and made a difference. It's the same old hard work a lot of us have been doing for years (educating), but it was done from a new perspective. It took thinking and responding outside the box.

By now it's pretty clear that most of the situations we are trying to change aren't new. The quest for equal rights for GLBT people has been going on--organized or not--or as long as we've existed. Things are inching along, yes, but we still do not have the same rights and privileges as our straight counterparts when it comes to health care, marriage, children, the military, the Boy Scouts, the workplace, and on and on. We can only keep chipping away at it. But to change things, we must constantly imagine new ways to make ourselves heard. It takes thinking differently; it takes shooting old situations from flesh camera angles. When Larry Kramer took off his clothes for Newsweek and courageously let his body show the ravages of AIDS to the world, the moment and photograph spoke as loud as any angry words he's ever uttered about the disease.

The Advocate has to puzzle out fresh approaches like this almost every time we do a cover story. For example, this year, when we featured Sharon Smith's heroic battle to file a wrongful death suit over the loss of her partner, who was mauled to death by dogs in San Francisco, we were really addressing gay marriage again--and what happens to us because we can't have it. Sharon's willingness to tell us her story refueled the fight for gay marriage.

While coming out and visibility are at the core of any effective campaign against homophobia, there must be new and surprising ways to accomplish these things. Our summer double issue features more than 100 gays and lesbians in the vanguard. Some of their unexpected tactics and stories include Guerrilla Queer Bar, a group of gays and lesbians who descend on unsuspecting straight bars every month with surprising results, as well as the "we are everywhere" coming-out revelations of two Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus clowns.

Finally, when it comes to furthering the discussion of the complex experience we call "gender," what could be more inventive than this year's highly anticipated movie on the subject, Hedwig and the Angry Inch? Surely if you look up vanguard in the dictionary, you'll find a photo of the cocreator of the play and the film's director, John Cameron Mitchell.