Brave Journeys
Profiles in Gay and Lesbian Courage
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In Stranger Among Friends, renowned activist, political adviser, and White House insider David Mixner offered a compelling account of his decades-long fight for human rights and the challenges he faced as a gay man in Washington. Now, in this new book written with collaborator Dennis Bailey, Mixner presents moving, candid, and inspiring portraits of other extraordinary men and women engaged in the struggle for equality.
Brave Journeys: Profiles in Gay and Lesbian Courage From a top-gun pilot in the U.S. Navy to an authority on antigay violence, from a member of the president's administration to a leading Shakespearean actor, Brave Journeys tells the stirring stories of seven intrepid men and women who effectively challenged the status quo and thereby altered the political and societal landscape of the world we live in.
In these pages we meet Hispanic-American Dianne Hardy-Garcia, executive director of the Lesbian and Gay Rights Lobby of Texas and a passionate crusader against hate crimes; Elaine Noble, the feisty veteran of Boston's busing wars who became the first openly gay person to be elected to a state office in the United States-the Massachusetts State Legislature; brilliant British actor Sir Ian McKellen, who came out as a gay man and an activist in one very public moment on the BBC; Roberta Achtenberg, who braved the venomous homophobia of Jesse Helms in Senate confirmation hearings for her appointment to the Department of Housing and Urban Development; Lieutenant Tracy Thorne, a Navy fighter pilot living his lifelong dream of flight who outed himself on Nightline to challenge the U.S. military's policy against gays and lesbians, fully aware that this would mean the end of his Navy career; and San Franciscans Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, founders of the first national lesbian organization, the Daughters of Bilitis, who have celebrated fifty years together as a couple. Powerful and eloquent, Brave Journeys is David Mixner's tribute to gay men and lesbians who have made a difference. Rich in private bravery and public risk, these profiles comprise a vivid map of the gay rights movement over the last fifty years-and individually they testify to the power of courage to force change against profoundly overwhelming odds.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Taking their cue from John F. Kennedy's 1956 Pulitzer Prize-winning Profiles in Courage, and such spinoffs as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Alan Steinberg's Black Profiles in Courage, Mixner (Stranger Among Friends) and Bailey detail the lives, careers and accomplishments of seven gay and lesbian freedom fighters. Lovers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon founded Daughters of Bilitis, a club that began as an anonymous meeting place for lesbians in San Francisco in 1955 (a harrowing time for homosexuals, when exposure often meant the loss of one's job and/or children) and blossomed into a force for gay rights. Sir Ian McKellen is an accomplished actor and gay rights activist. Elaine Noble, a former state representative of Massachusetts, was the first openly gay person elected to state office in the U.S., in 1975. Roberta Actenberg, an activist lawyer, cofounded the gay Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom and was later appointed by President Clinton as assistant secretary of housing and urban development in 1993. Model serviceman Lt. Tracy Thorne was dismissed from the navy after declaring he was gay on prime-time news in 1992. Dianne Hardy-Garcia, a grassroots gay organizer from Dallas, is executive director of the Lesbian and Gay Rights Lobby of Texas. Though their intent is obviously hagiography, Mixner and Bailey avoid maudlin sentimentality. If the authors occasionally indulge in feel-good overstatements ("thanks to Elaine Noble's pioneering efforts, diversity reigns on the American political landscape"), they also provide compelling narratives of courage and tenacity, of ample inspiration and commemoration.
