Books in Brief

ODD THING about this book. Mel White, gay pastor and activist, hates narrowness of mind. Yet, when talking of the “religious Right,” which he accuses of whipping up homophobia, he grows positively sulphurous. “The homophobic lies of the religious Right are murdering the souls and threatening the civil rights of gay and lesbian Americans.” That’s a sample of Mr. White’s rhetoric. A former ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, as well as a noted religious filmmaker, Mr. White recounts graphically his agonized pilgrimage from husband and father to unabashed gay activist. Having grown up in a way-out fundamentalist family, he tried Christian healing. It didn’t take. This book is in some sense his angry thanks-but-no-thanks to a religious culture he believes let him down. There is tenderness and humor in the early chapters but, at the end, mostly hostility, if not near-hysteria. Jerry Falwell seems a lot less obsessed with sex than does Mel White.

—William Murchison

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ODD THING about this book. Mel White, gay pastor and activist, hates narrowness of mind. Yet, when talking of the “religious Right,” which he accuses of whipping up homophobia, he grows positively sulphurous. “The homophobic lies of the religious Right are murdering the souls and threatening the civil rights of gay and lesbian Americans.” That’s a sample of Mr. White’s rhetoric. A former ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, as well as a noted religious filmmaker, Mr. White recounts graphically his agonized pilgrimage from husband and father to unabashed gay activist. Having grown up in a way-out fundamentalist family, he tried Christian healing. It didn’t take. This book is in some sense his angry thanks-but-no-thanks to a religious culture he believes let him down. There is tenderness and humor in the early chapters but, at the end, mostly hostility, if not near-hysteria. Jerry Falwell seems a lot less obsessed with sex than does Mel White.

—William Murchison