Title: On Being Gay - Thoughts on Family, Faith, and Love Author: Brian McNaught Published by: St. Martin's Press, 1988 ISBN: 0-312-01800-2 [hardcover, 176 pages]
Brian McNaught has a special knack for enabling people to understand what it means to be gay. Since 1974, he has done so as a writer and lecturer. Explaining, encouraging, and often healing his audiences of teenagers and college students, sex educators, and counselors, priests and police officers. This important collection of his highly regarded published writings will help gay men and women who seek to understand, affirm, and integrate their sexual orientation into the rest of their lives.McNaught provides a look - sometimes humorous, always insightful - at such diverse but related concerns as whether or not to "come out," maintaining ties with one's family, building love relationships that last, developing an honest relationship with God, dealing with AIDS, and accepting oneself as decent and worthy of respect.
On Being Gay is an excellent primer for those who want a sensitively written introduction to what it means to be gay. With its pithy and wise essays on being yourself, on growing up gay, on friends and lovers, this book is a kind and comforting guidepost for those people who seek to live a more meaningful gay life.
Note: This book places less emphasis on religion than does the companion 80-minute video. The video contains a mix of monologue by McNaught and clips from his many lectures to college students across the country. The first 40 minutes is a general discussion of what it is like to grow up gay in the straight environment of America. The second 40 minutes is devoted to reconciling being Gay with having a fulfilling spiritual life. For information about the video, contact: TRB Productions, P.O. Box 2362, Boston, MA 02107.
Return to Jay's West Hollywood Home Return to Spirituality and Religion Send to Jay
