Miller, Merle. On Being Different. Random House, 1987.
Reason read: Merle Miller celebrated a birthday in May. Read in his honor.
The prejudice one has for homosexuals borders on insane, yet it exists. Why anyone would see a link between homosexuality and communism is beyond me. Same with thinking marriage could be a potential “cure” for homosexuality. These are the beliefs of the ignorant. It took Miller fifty years to come out of the closet. That is an unimaginable length of time to hide one’s true self yet it happens all the time. Miller’s essay “On Being Different” is a valiant attempt to respond to the ignorant and expose the human side of love. He discusses the prejudices and fears without flinching. There is grace threaded throughout his anger.
Book trivia: the foreword was written by Dan Savage. Afterword One was written by Merle Miller. Afterword Two was written by Charles Kaiser. Acknowledgments were written by Carol Hanley. On Being Different is only a twenty-one page essay, but with all these other additions and appendices A through C is becomes a much longer book.
Confessional: I, too, like Halloween for all of its mask wearing.
Playlist: Paul Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Peggy Lee’s “Love Story”, Liberace, Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, and “We Shall Overcome”.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Merle Miller: Too Good To Miss” (p 155).
~*LunaSea*~ 