Anne Rice, the author of Interview with the Vampire, had spent more than a decade back in the Catholic Church when she quit Christianity in 2010, and told the world why: "In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay." She had written two novels about the life of Jesus. Among the church actions that drove her out, she cited the US bishops putting money into fighting same-sex marriage. "I quit Christianity and being Christian," she wrote. Her faith in Christ stayed; the institution didn't. Rice, who would have turned 85 today, had gay readers from the start. They read her vampires as "a sustained gay allegory," she said, and she lived in San Francisco's Castro long before her son Christopher came out. When he did, she said, "I did not love him one drop less." She later put it plainly: "I think I have a gay sensibility and I feel like I'm gay, because I've always transcended gender."