To Ornament My Soul

This memoir celebrates 15 years of my life, when I was a young man in love at the dawn of gay liberation. Stonewall. It had to begin somewhere. And each of us had to begin to love ourselves, and each other, for who we really are. "Stonewall made us realize that the journey of discovering what love is must begin with ourselves....Once we do, the sensual and spiritual journey of our life begins."At great cost to each and every one of us, we witnessed to the beauty and wholesomeness of same sex love. We witnessed to the holiness of our love. We changed the world. The Stonewall Generation made the stupendous decision to accept and celebrate our same sex nature. And so we made manifest what had been savagely and murderously repressed for two thousand years: that male love is beautiful. You will meet the man with whom I shared more than my body—we shared our souls. "We believed that gay sexuality could be central to a healthy spirituality." Gay love helped us reclaim a genuine spirituality. Our love for each other helped us re-claim our imperfect humanity, and I believe that is the path to the divine. We proved gay love is a facet of God's love. "Our bodies are made in the image and likeness of God. And our souls are immortal. We are beautiful beings." This book will also take you on a wild ride through "...the bacchanal of the 1970's." Your tour will take you from a notorious all-male cinema, to the Folsom Street leather scene, to bars, baths and backrooms all across the country. I enjoyed the trip, and hope you will, too.