Customer Reviews

Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you grow up gay, this book shows, you have two choices.

First, you can manufacture a false and increasingly neurotic self that must lie at all costs, to all people, all the time, merely to survive. You must compartmentalize your public and private lives, deny what you know to be true about yourself, and vigilantly censor yourself in everything you do, say, and feel. Living this way leads to mental, physical and emotional exhaustion, self-hatred, suicidal ideation, cutting, and chronic frustration. This first scenario begs the question, "how long can you deny who you really are?" As one contributor put it, "the closet is a terrible place to live."

But there's a second option. You can let down your guard and live spontaneously as your true and authentic self. But in this scenario you face catastrophic losses in your church, synagogue, family, job, school and community. For some gays, living authentically comes at an unacceptably high price. Among religious believers and before God, could you live with being called an abomination who ought to be stoned to death (Leviticus 20:13) and who will suffer forever in hell? Would you be willing to risk full and final rejection by your family? How well do you think you could endure daily taunts and physical abuse at school? Do you think you'd risk your career for the sake of authenticity? Nor is honoring your true self psychologically easy: "The only way I survived as a gay man," writes one person, "was by embracing everything I was taught to hate about myself."

I was deeply moved by these short (4-5 pages each), simple, and intensely personal stories. They're organized around four themes: religion, family-community, work and school. The authors come from a wide variety of backgrounds, from white evangelicals to black Baptists, devout Mormons, orthodox Jews, and conservative Catholics. There are young teenagers, famous politicians, and two professional athletes. Most of the stories (31 of 40) are written by men, and there's no story written by a transgendered person. The last two stories are written by mothers who describe how they lost their gay teenagers to suicide and a brutal murder.

With remarkable regularity and similarity, every story witnesses to "the power and tenacity of our social conditioning" which punishes gay people. They refute the discredited but prevalent ideas that people choose or can change their sexual orientation. In fact, almost every gay person in this book has done everything in their power to try to change--denial, aversion therapies, "reparative" therapy, behavior modification, overcompensation, electric shock treatments, prayers, counseling, and even exorcism. But if you flip the question you understand the futility of trying to alter what cannot change: did you choose to be heterosexual or could you change yourself to a gay orientation?

This tragic mental health crisis, writes Gold, is entirely preventable and solvable. His book does a tremendous service in taking readers down that long road to wholeness and healing.

As a Director of Human Resources in the not-for-profit sector, I would recommend CRISIS for every parent, educator, employer and worker in the human services profession.

It is our responsibility to learn and do more to teach one another and educate our next generation about the vocabulary of diversity, respect and inclusion. Our goal is to eliminate future shameful examples of discrimination, harassment and bias. As a friend says - "CEO means, 'Chief Example Officer'." An interesting and important concept.

Are you able to examine your organizations "best practices" and say out loud, "I have no shame"?

A well-informed commitment to change the barriers (or differences) which exist for our LGBT citizens is needed to end this prejudice worldwide.

This change is woefully overdue.

Put down the notion you cannot influence significant change, and pick up a few copies of CRISIS to share.

Lisa Witkowski, SPHR
Director of Human Resources
Jewish Family Service of Atlantic & Cape May Counties

This is an extremely valuable book, particularly for communities of faith struggling with the request of gay believers for full inclusion, full communion,a and equal rights within churches. The book documents well the tragically deformative role that religion often plays in the lives of LGBT persons, by fueling condemnation and often outright rejection or hatred.

In doing so, it provides a valuable reminder that religion can, and often does, play a different role in human life and human communities--a liberating rather than oppressing role. This study suggests that, in order for communities of faith to move from oppression to liberation of gay human beings, they must begin to know actual gay human beings--as human beings and not as stereotyped threats to Christian morality. The book's most important contribution is its first-hand accounts that permit people of faith to hear the stories of gay brothers and sisters and to see the faces of gay brothers and sisters.

Through all of the stories in Crisis there runs a common thread: the thread of shame, depression, isolation, overcompensation, and fear of rejection and failure that gay persons all too often encounter as we claim our identities in a culture (and in religious communities) that reinforce these negative self-images. The stories in Crisis document well the hard work required to sustain self-worth in a culture so unrelentingly negative, a culture in which the the name of God is too often used to create obstacles to gay human beings claiming their identities.

As a number of the book's autobiographies suggest, in the uniquely religion-imbued culture of the United States, culture is often informed by religious assumptions and biblical citations, even when those making the assumptions and using the citations have little familiarity with religion. In this regard, there are strong parallels between the struggle of gay persons for liberation today and similar struggles in the past. As with the struggle to overcome slavery, racial segregation, or the subordination of women, gay persons have to deal today with oppressive norms that have been inculturated as religious norms, even when those norms have detached themselves from actual communities of faith.

In dealing with this social inculturation of quasi-religious norms demeaning gay human beings, communities of faith need to remember (by looking back on their response to slavery, segregation, and the subordination of women, for instance) that religion can sometimes be spectacularly wrong. It can end up on the wrong side of history, and of the liberating impulses of history.

Religion has the potential to be salvific, but it also carries the power to be demonic. Look at the Holocaust, burning of witches, Crusades, pogroms, slavery and how can one doubt this? This historical perspective ought to give churches that are certain today of their scriptural warrant for oppressing gay persons and for supporting that oppression in culture pause to think.

I found the Crisis chapters on the risks of being openly gay at work particularly important. Those risks clearly vary from profession to profession. As a theologian who has taught and done administrative work in church-sponsored colleges, I have learned that the churches may well be the last places in the nation to welcome openly gay employees.

There is, sad to say, a unique lack of shelter and welcome for openly gay persons within many churches and church-related institutions. It seems to me that, before communities of faith can call on society to treat gay human beings with respect and justice, they must set their own houses in order by dealing with their history of disrespect and injustice towards gay brothers and sisters--disrespect and injustice still apparent in the personnel policies of many churches and church-owned institutions.

In the final analysis, gay people may bring to the churches gifts that the churches refuse to accept at their own risk. As Crisis demonstrates, in a world in which children are often abused despite our culture's and churches' professed concern for the welfare of children, the gay community demonstrates an extraordinary concern for the well-being of bullied children. Despite the claim by many in both church and society that gay persons are anti-family and non-generative, gay persons can do an admirable job of sustaining families, and, in particular, of reaching out to assist children enduring abuse from peers.

This is a valuable and often unacknowledged contribution of the gay community to church and society. The book documents it well.

"I'd rather be shot dead than know my son is queer!"
To me, this is the heart of the crisis discussed in Gold's book. It reflects the verbal abuse of gay young people by those who have a responsibility to love and support them. It also reflects the perverted teachings of many churches - that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (GLBTQ) youth are not worthy of respect and love.
The forty short autobiographical sketches that make up the bulk of Crisis largely show over and over the oppression experienced during their formative years by these gay men and women. All of them finally overcame their religion-based oppression. Most are now highly respected leaders in their chosen professions. Still, their stories reveal the years of fear and shame they - and so many others like them - experienced in their most formative years.
Many young gays are not so lucky. Many suffer total rejection by their church, schoolmates, and family, and are left to fend for themselves at a vulnerable young age. They suffer both verbal and physical abuse simply because of who they are. Too many are lost, through murder and suicide. Is no one ashamed that their words have cost these young people their lives?
Crisis stresses the need for acceptance and support of all our GLBTQ children. Parents, churches, schools, and politicians must recognize the grave harm they do not only to the GLBTQ youth themselves, but also to their families and friends.
It is Mitchell Gold's expressed hope that families, church leaders, politicians, and school authorities will read his book. There is a desperate need for all of them to act to eliminate the violence inflicted on the millions of American GLBTQ teens by the very people charged with protecting them.

This book should be read by everyone. It should especailly be shared with clergy, school teachers and other people of authority. This book was transformative! I now understand the tremendous challenges faced by gay children growing up today. High school is difficult enough for the straight teenager, let alone te gay teenager. I learned a lot by reading this powerful and informative book. It is well written, interesting and easy to read. I will purchase several more copies to distribute to my friends and family.

When my son was very young, I sensed that he was most likely gay and did my own research to find understanding and acceptance. However, this book helped me to understand that having a supportive parent and siblings is not enough. Hopefully, other family members and friends who read this book will gain insight into the hurtfulness and self loathing that results from bigotry outside the home. If I had read a book such as this twenty years ago, I would have had deeper understanding of his "world at school" and been more proactive.

I read Crisis per the suggestion of our minister. This was in conjunction with reading Jack Rogers Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality. Both of these books are must reads for anyone, and/or their families, struggling to reconcile sexual identity with their faith, especially when their faith experience labels them as abominations, sinners, etc. These books affirm that you are fine and accepted just the way God created you, whomever you perceive God to be.

It is also for those who believe the above labels are true within their faith experience, and for those who cannot understand homosexuality from any perspective. Please read with an open heart and mind. This issue is not a simple black or white issue. It involves people we all know and love.

Thank you,
Straight but not Narrow

This should be required reading for every single person in this nation. This book contains stories of hardship, friendship, tolerance, acceptance and success... not to be missed. I could not put it down.

It's sad to think how many gay youth are made to feel so ugly and unworthy for something they cannot control. By distorted intrepretation of the Bible some churches (thankfully not all) hammer in the idea that homosexuality is an abomination. When a child knows he/she is diffent and can't change, will family be supportive? Many will, others will not. For me, after reading the painful stories, the best part of the book was the light of newer intrepretations of the scriptures that have caused so much hurt. Now, if only Biblical literalists would read the book!

I bought a copy of this book for myself and one for my local Gay Youth Organization (about 350 kids) to help them find their voices and to help them lead others. In my opinion it is one of the most important books everyone of every age can read today. The vast majority of heterosexual people simply do not know about the lives, persecution and suffering of the GLBT children and youth all around them. They need to know. GLBT kids are routinely treated in ways that are child abuse for every other child in the U.S.