The conversation with Luis had left me awash in feelings. I thanked Luis, we kissed goodbye, and I took the subway home to the Bronx. He was the only historical figure I was aware of who was identified as homosexual, and I knew that the scandal surrounding this had resulted in a prison sentence. His play The Importance of Being Earnest was a standard work on literature reading lists. The book was De Profundis, by Oscar Wilde. It offered a comfort that I badly needed as I was struggling with my love for a man. “You should read this,” he said as he placed it in my hands. He walked to a bookcase in his living room and pulled out a thin volume. He gave me his phone number and encouraged me to call as I was about to leave, he signaled to me to wait. He listened patiently, talked about the hard times he had gone through earlier in life, and assured me that things would change. Luis made me comfortable enough that I felt the freedom to share the struggles I was having. I told him that I was a student at Columbia, that I was hoping to major in religion, that I had always lived in New York. Maybe because I had now turned a corner and was seeing myself as a homosexual, I began talking to Luis about my life. In this exclusive excerpt, the Jesuit-educated author recalls the aftermath of a life-altering dinner conversation with a New Yorker named Luis, a Cuban exile working at the United Nations in the late 1960s.
He will be honored with a book launch on November 15 at the Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. His most recent book, “Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood: Coming of Age in the Sixties,” is published by Duke University Press. Texas, a 2003 ruling that struck down laws criminalizing consensual relations between same-sex partners. Freedman, is cited in the landmark Supreme Court decision Lawrence v. His 1988 study Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, co-authored by Estelle B. John D’Emilio, professor emeritus of history and gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, formerly directed the policy institute at what became the National LGBTQ Task Force.
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