Loss--feeling unacceptable to family, church, or workplace; losing loved ones to AIDS; being despised by segments of society--is universal among lesbians and gay men. Using an eight-phase model illustrated with real case histories, the authors explore loss as a catalyst for growth and personal and spiritual transformation.

"Perez is certainly not the first writer to try to find a unique mixture of alternate sexuality and religiosity, but his memoir has the heat and immediacy of the blog from which it developed. As Perez comes to terms with illness, loneliness, and the spirit, he also shows us a part of the future of reading and publishing—the voyeuristic thrills of blog diaries and a continual dialog between print and electronic media."—Library Journal

Every chapter in this book is an invitation. Its thoughts and stories carry you over and over again into a deeper place where you can reflect on your own life and, indeed, universal life. At one point, its author observes (that) ...religious talk is about religious talk. Life becomes a footnote. Life is never a footnote for Michael Kelly. His close experience of the engaging of religion with life is both challenging and inspiring. I could not put this book down, not just because it relates to my own story but because it is authentic, vulnerable, yet life-giving. It does not demand that you agree, but gently and profoundly opens up the questions within a brave and faithful journey. Rev. Dorothy McRae-McMahon

"A MUST-READ for psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychologists, ethicists, sociologists, political scientists, and researchers of every sort." -- Paul Jay Fink, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Temple University School of Medicine

"At last, a single publication about attempts to change sexual orientation." -- Robert Paul Cabaj, MD, Director, San Francisco Community Behavioral Health Services

This is a great book for anyone who wants to expand their understanding of those who are any of the above. It is so easy for those of us not in this situation to misunderstand and even to have very negative beliefs about any of these people. To hear their own individual stories in a non-judgemental way is to open all of us to greater acceptance and love. (Review by Evelyn Ediger at Amazon.com)

Jordan (Medieval Inst., Univ. of Notre Dame) traces the medieval invention of the concept of sodomy and its place in modern American context. He examines paradoxes in the moral teaching on sexuality, especially the theological context for same-sex genital acts, by exploring the history of Christian writings. Eleventh-century theologian Peter Damian coined the term sodomy in relation to the word blasphemy in an abstracted analogy to the sin of denying God through homoerotic desires. Jordan exposes the fallacies in this abstraction in the varied writing styles of Damian, Albert the Great, Alan of Lille, and Thomas Aquinas, tracing words taken out of context and rifts that have resulted. A scholarly but compelling study; for academic libraries. (Review by Library Journal)