input: Sullivan, like Marshall Kirk, Hunter Madsen, and Bruce Bawer, has been described by Urvashi Vaid as a proponent of "legitimation", seeing the objective of the gay rights movement as being "mainstreaming gay and lesbian people" rather than "radical social change". Sullivan wrote the first major article in the United States advocating for gay people to be given the right to marry, published in The New Republic in 1989. Many gay rights organisations attacked him for the stance at the time. Many on "the gay left" believed that he was promoting "assimilation" into "straight culture", when the aim of most at that time was to alter codes of sexuality and society as a whole, rather than fitting gays into it. However, his arguments eventually became widely accepted and formed the basis of the modern movement to allow same-sex marriage. In the wake of the United States Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage in 2013 (Hollingsworth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor), New York Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat suggested that Sullivan might be the most influential political writer of his generation, writing, "No intellectual that I can think of, writing on a fraught and controversial topic, has seen their once-crankish, outlandish-seeming idea become the conventional wisdom so quickly, and be instantantiated so rapidly in law and custom." Sullivan opposes hate crime laws, arguing that they undermine freedom of speech and equal protection. He also opposes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, arguing that it would "not make much of a difference" and that the "gay rights establishment" was wrong to oppose a version of the bill that did not include protections for gender identity. Sullivan opposed calls to remove Brendan Eich as CEO of Mozilla and argued that "old-fashioned liberalism brought gay equality to America far, far faster than identity politics leftism." In 2006, Sullivan was named as an LGBT History Month icon.

Answer this question "How exactly did he get involved?"
output: Sullivan wrote the first major article in the United States advocating for gay people to be given the right to marry,

input: Thornton and Abrams became friends in junior high school, and Watters and Calderon became friends in grade school. The four met in the mid-1980s while attending Northwest Classen High School in Oklahoma City. They were all members of the school choir. The group originally formed in 1985 as Take One, but changed their name to Color Me Badd to avoid confusion with an a cappella band named Take 6. Watters selected the name, after a horse at the racetrack named Color Me Bad. They aimed to be a vocal group in the vein of New Edition and New Kids on the Block. They first performed together in a school talent show, influenced by doo-wop a cappella groups of the past, such as Sam Cooke, The Temptations and the Four Tops. The group came up with a plan to spontaneously audition for any big name acts playing in Oklahoma City. They met Robert Bell of Kool & the Gang on May 27, 1987, when they were in Oklahoma City for a performance. They auditioned for him and he introduced them to his then-road manager, Adil Bayyan, who would become Color Me Badd's manager and convince them to move to New York City to pursue a record deal. They also sang for Huey Lewis and the News, Sheila E. and Ronnie Milsap, and opened for Tony! Toni! Tone! in Oklahoma City in 1988. One afternoon in 1989, Thornton saw Jon Bon Jovi in a movie theater and called the other band members to join him. They waited for him to leave the theater and then sung the 1961 doo-wop hit "Daddy's Home" a cappella for him. Bon Jovi invited them to be his band's opening act the following night, to perform in front of 20,000 audience members. They moved to New York City on September 23, 1989. In 1990, they bumped into Tony! Toni! Tone!, who got them into the ASCAP Music Awards. There, Color Me Badd approached producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and started singing for them. The producers advised that, being a multicultural group, they write a half-English, half-Spanish song. They wrote "I Adore Mi Amor" back in Oklahoma City with their producer and friend Hamza Lee. Giant Records executive Cassandra Mills heard a tape of the band singing the song, and they signed with Giant on August 11, 1990.

Answer this question "When did they start getting successful?"
output: They also sang for Huey Lewis and the News, Sheila E. and Ronnie Milsap, and opened for Tony! Toni! Tone! in Oklahoma City in 1988.

input: The musicians' union ban pushed Musicraft to the brink of bankruptcy, and Vaughan used the missed royalty payments as an opportunity to sign with the larger Columbia record label. Following the settling of the legal issues, her chart successes continued with the charting of "Black Coffee" in the summer of 1949. During her tenure at Columbia through 1953, Vaughan was steered almost exclusively to commercial pop ballads, a number of which had chart success: "That Lucky Old Sun", "Make Believe (You Are Glad When You're Sorry)", "I'm Crazy to Love You", "Our Very Own", "I Love the Guy", "Thinking of You" (with pianist Bud Powell), "I Cried for You", "These Things I Offer You", "Vanity", "I Ran All the Way Home", "Saint or Sinner", "My Tormented Heart", and "Time", among others. Vaughan achieved substantial critical acclaim. She won Esquire magazine's New Star Award for 1947 as well as awards from Down Beat magazine continually from 1947-1952, and from Metronome magazine from 1948-1953. A handful of critics disliked her singing for its being "over-stylized", reflecting the heated controversies of the time over the new musical trends of the late '40s. However, the critical reception of the young singer was generally positive. Recording and critical success led to numerous performing opportunities, with Vaughan packing clubs around the country almost continuously throughout the years of the late 1940s and early 1950s. In the summer of 1949, Vaughan made her first appearance with a symphony orchestra in a benefit for the Philadelphia Orchestra entitled "100 Men and a Girl." Around this time, Chicago disk jockey Dave Garroway coined a second nickname for her--"The Divine One"--that would follow her throughout her career. One of her early television appearances was on DuMont's variety show Stars on Parade (1953-54), in which she sang "My Funny Valentine" and "Linger Awhile". In 1949, with their finances improving, Vaughan and Treadwell purchased a three-story house on 21 Avon Avenue in Newark, occupying the top floor during their increasingly rare off-hours at home and relocating Vaughan's parents to the lower two floors. However, business pressures and personality conflicts led to a cooling in Treadwell and Vaughan's relationship. Treadwell hired a road manager to handle Vaughan's touring needs, and opened a management office in Manhattan so he could work with clients in addition to Vaughan. Vaughan's relationship with Columbia Records also soured as she became dissatisfied with the commercial material she was required to record and the lackluster financial success of her records. A set of small group sides recorded in 1950 with Miles Davis and Bennie Green are among the best of her career, but they were atypical of her Columbia output.

Answer this question "When did she begin working with Columbia?"
output:
"Black Coffee" in the summer of 1949. During her tenure at Columbia through 1953, Vaughan