Jim Kepner: Jim Kepner was founder of the International Gay and Lesbian Archives, and co-founder of ONE Institute. A major pioneer of the Gay movement as well as a founder of Gay Studies, he died in 1997. His final book was ROUGH NEWS, DARING VIEWS: PIONEER GAY PRESS JOURNALISM IN THE 1950S, published by Haworth Press.
This is a provocative anthology of Mark Thompson's interviews with several unique gay thinkers with very different approaches to the concept and workings of gay soul. He interviews Episcopal priest Malcolm Boyd, who is also Thompson's longtime lover, as well as the delightful poet James Broughton, the profound late novelist Paul Monette, Freudian therapist Richard Isay, Buddhist Andrew Harvey, contrasting faeries Harry Hay (who brushed off the term “soul” as belonging to the Pope, and astonishingly asserts that “we gay people — the people of the paradox — know how to live in doubt”) and Jungian Mitch Walker. Thompson scored a major coup by interviewing the guru Ram Dass, who was not publicly identified as gay before this publication. Thompson's book, thoughtful, sometimes whimsical, and inspiring, deserves far more attention than is being given here. In a volume full of insight, Mark Thompson's own essay is perhaps the best in the book.
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