Growing Up Gay & Lesbian

"I was the John Boy Walton of Detroit," says Brian McNaught, an author and renowned public educator who writes and speaks on the subject of homosexuality. Born into a large Irish Catholic family, McNaught was a superachiever: altar boy, class president, the works. At the age of 26, however, Brian McNaught drank turpentine, because he could no longer live the dual life of a gay man who feels constrained by a semi-hostile society to keep his sexual orientation a secret. Filmed before a seminar group, McNaught mixes personal anecdote and sobering social statistics (30% of teen suicides are gay and lesbian kids) to explain the peculiar hell of growing up gay. Unlike children who are the targets of racial slurs, gay and lesbian young adults can't bring their problems home to their parents because they're afraid of telling them the truth. The Twilight Zone nightmare quality of this secret life is driven home in an exercise in which McNaught takes the audience through a society where most people are gay, but the seminar participants are heterosexual (subject to constant slurs such as "breeder"). In a national debate often marked by hyperbole and hostility from both sides, McNaught brings compassion, tranquility, and a genuine willingness to work with people to the discussion while still firmly emphasizing that as an American citizen he too is entitled to the same basic rights that many of us take for granted. An outstanding presentation. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. [Note: when purchased with Homophobia in the Workplace, reviewed in this issue, the two tapes cost $59.95.] (R. Pitman)