Coming Out Conservative [Hardcover]

Marvin Liebman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1992

A personal treatise on the future of the conservatist movement in America--for everyone interested in the future of American politics. Liebman's story is filled with personal anecdotes about William F. Buckley, Jr., Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, and many other powerful conservatives, and offers intriguing revelations about how our government operates. Photographs.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this uneven autobiography, leading conservative activist Liebman chronicles the closeted homosexual life that he lived while pursuing his very public career. In 1990, after 40 years at the forefront of anti-communist politics and involvement in theater production, Liebman announced that he is homosexual in the National Review and the gay newsmagazine the Advocate . Though aware of his sexual orientation at an early age, he avoided publicly declaring it; after a demoralizing dishonorable discharge from the Army and a brief (annulled) marriage, he continued to hide his homosexuality from even his closest friends. Consequently, his book is more about his politics--and such associates as William F. Buckley, Clare Booth Luce and Ronald Reagan--than about his coming out. Asserting his belief in "the importance of the individual over any state, political party or religious hierarchy," Liebman tells of founding, in the mid-1950s, the Committee of One Million, whose mission was to exclude Communist China from the United Nations, and, later, the Young Americans for Freedom and the American Conservative Union. Photos not seen by PW .
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Liebman, a noted political strategist and fund-raiser for the Republican Party, is recognized as the founder of the modern conservative movement in the United States. Here, he offers fascinating insights into contemporary conservative politics. This autobiography resulted from his 1990 decision to distance the conservative political movement from the "radical right." His first step was to write a "coming out" letter to both the conservative journal National Review and the gay news magazine The Advocate . Liebman's story provides a riveting account of what it is like to be gay and conservative, an often unacceptable combination within the gay rights movement in the United States. Not since Robert Bauman's The Gentlemen from Maryland ( LJ 8/86) has the issue of gay conservatives been examined in such a forthright manner. Recommended for public and academic libraries.
- Michael A. Lutes, Univ. of Notre Dame Lib., Ind.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books; First Printing edition (August 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811800733
• ISBN-13: 978-0811800730
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,718,368 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars First-rate look at beginnings of conservative movement, August 9, 1998

By 

Rick Sincere ([e-mail]) (Arlington, Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Coming Out Conservative (Hardcover)

(I originally reviewed this book in the Autumn 1992 issue of Terra Nova, a no-longer-published quarterly from the International Freedom Foundation in Washington, DC.) The triumph of conservative politics in the United States and classical liberalism worldwide was not due entirely to academic treatises. It required ward-heeling, electioneering, money, and propaganda. This memoir tells the tale of a behind-the-scenes activist helping others gain the limelight. Liebman was a committed Communist whose mind was changed when Stalin's atrocities came to light in the 1950s. He brought to the nascent conservative movement a talent for the agitprop developed by the Left and instituted grassroots organizing and fundraising methods still in use today. A longtime associate of William F. Buckley, Jr., he cofounded Young Americans for Freedom and the American Conservative Union. He is probably the only person to work both on Henry Wallace's Communist-front presidential campaign in 1948 and those of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan two decades later. His book helps put the conservative movement in both a personal and a historical context.