I think these last 10 years have seen just a huge shift in the psyche of this country as regards gay people. I think AIDS had a lot to do with it. So many families who really believed they'd 'never met one' were suddenly confronted with their sons becoming ill, and friends of sons. I think that brought a lot of it into the open.

During the 1982–1992 period Janis Ian continued to write songs often in collaboration with songwriting partner Kye Fleming which were covered by the likes of Amy Grant Bette Midler and Marti Jones. She has a selection of her columns available on her website. She also came out as a lesbian with that release.

She has won two Grammy Awards the first in 1975 for her song "At Seventeen" and the second in 2013 for Best Spoken Word Album for her autobiography Society's Child (nearly 40 years later). Janis Ian (born Janis Eddy Fink April 7 1951) is an American songwriter singer musician columnist and science fiction author. Ian first entered the folk music scene while still a teenager in the mid-sixties; most active musically in that decade and the 1970s Janis Ian has continued recording into the 21st century.