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| Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America | 
 enlarge | Authors: Mitchell Gold, Mindy Drucker
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group, LLC
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 3179
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 1929774109
Dewey Decimal Number: 305
EAN: 9781929774104
ASIN: 1929774109
Publication Date: September 1, 2008
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Product Description
A mental health crisis faces American teens right now--and it is one we can solve. Hundreds of thousands of gay teens face traumatic depression, fear, rejection, persecution, and isolation--usually alone. Studies show they are 190 percent more likely to used drugs or alcohol and four times more likely to attempt suicide. Homophobia and discrimination are at the heart of their pain. Love, support, and acceptance--all within our power to give--can save them. This book is for: clergy, parents, educators, and politicians who cause harm with their words and actions; parents of gay teens; teens navigating this difficult time; and fair-minded people who want to help end the harm. Here are revealing stories by forty diverse Americans, some well known and some not, plus insights from straight clergy and parents explaining their support of gay people as whole human beings guaranteed equal rights by our Constitution.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
Hearing the Stories, Seeing the Faces: A Review of Crisis November 16, 2008
This is an extremely valuable book, particularly for communities of faith struggling with the request of gay believers for full inclusion, full communion,a and equal rights within churches. The book documents well the tragically deformative role that religion often plays in the lives of LGBT persons, by fueling condemnation and often outright rejection or hatred.
In doing so, it provides a valuable reminder that religion can, and often does, play a different role in human life and human communities--a liberating rather than oppressing role. This study suggests that, in order for communities of faith to move from oppression to liberation of gay human beings, they must begin to know actual gay human beings--as human beings and not as stereotyped threats to Christian morality. The book's most important contribution is its first-hand accounts that permit people of faith to hear the stories of gay brothers and sisters and to see the faces of gay brothers and sisters.
Through all of the stories in Crisis there runs a common thread: the thread of shame, depression, isolation, overcompensation, and fear of rejection and failure that gay persons all too often encounter as we claim our identities in a culture (and in religious communities) that reinforce these negative self-images. The stories in Crisis document well the hard work required to sustain self-worth in a culture so unrelentingly negative, a culture in which the the name of God is too often used to create obstacles to gay human beings claiming their identities.
As a number of the book's autobiographies suggest, in the uniquely religion-imbued culture of the United States, culture is often informed by religious assumptions and biblical citations, even when those making the assumptions and using the citations have little familiarity with religion. In this regard, there are strong parallels between the struggle of gay persons for liberation today and similar struggles in the past. As with the struggle to overcome slavery, racial segregation, or the subordination of women, gay persons have to deal today with oppressive norms that have been inculturated as religious norms, even when those norms have detached themselves from actual communities of faith.
In dealing with this social inculturation of quasi-religious norms demeaning gay human beings, communities of faith need to remember (by looking back on their response to slavery, segregation, and the subordination of women, for instance) that religion can sometimes be spectacularly wrong. It can end up on the wrong side of history, and of the liberating impulses of history.
Religion has the potential to be salvific, but it also carries the power to be demonic. Look at the Holocaust, burning of witches, Crusades, pogroms, slavery and how can one doubt this? This historical perspective ought to give churches that are certain today of their scriptural warrant for oppressing gay persons and for supporting that oppression in culture pause to think.
I found the Crisis chapters on the risks of being openly gay at work particularly important. Those risks clearly vary from profession to profession. As a theologian who has taught and done administrative work in church-sponsored colleges, I have learned that the churches may well be the last places in the nation to welcome openly gay employees.
There is, sad to say, a unique lack of shelter and welcome for openly gay persons within many churches and church-related institutions. It seems to me that, before communities of faith can call on society to treat gay human beings with respect and justice, they must set their own houses in order by dealing with their history of disrespect and injustice towards gay brothers and sisters--disrespect and injustice still apparent in the personnel policies of many churches and church-owned institutions.
In the final analysis, gay people may bring to the churches gifts that the churches refuse to accept at their own risk. As Crisis demonstrates, in a world in which children are often abused despite our culture's and churches' professed concern for the welfare of children, the gay community demonstrates an extraordinary concern for the well-being of bullied children. Despite the claim by many in both church and society that gay persons are anti-family and non-generative, gay persons can do an admirable job of sustaining families, and, in particular, of reaching out to assist children enduring abuse from peers.
This is a valuable and often unacknowledged contribution of the gay community to church and society. The book documents it well.
Great book! Make sure your copy is not defective. November 11, 2008
This is a great book, an important book! Make sure you have all the pages. My copy arrived with the first 15 pages from "Normandy to Victory." "Crisis" begins on page 5 so I lack the intro by Navratilova. This is a rich book of intense experiences which you will want to share with friends, family, co-workers. No library should be without it!
Compilation of brief stories about growing up gay in America October 29, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
"I'd rather be shot dead than know my son is queer!"
To me, this is the heart of the crisis discussed in Gold's book. It reflects the verbal abuse of gay young people by those who have a responsibility to love and support them. It also reflects the perverted teachings of many churches - that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (GLBTQ) youth are not worthy of respect and love.
The forty short autobiographical sketches that make up the bulk of Crisis largely show over and over the oppression experienced during their formative years by these gay men and women. All of them finally overcame their religion-based oppression. Most are now highly respected leaders in their chosen professions. Still, their stories reveal the years of fear and shame they - and so many others like them - experienced in their most formative years.
Many young gays are not so lucky. Many suffer total rejection by their church, schoolmates, and family, and are left to fend for themselves at a vulnerable young age. They suffer both verbal and physical abuse simply because of who they are. Too many are lost, through murder and suicide. Is no one ashamed that their words have cost these young people their lives?
Crisis stresses the need for acceptance and support of all our GLBTQ children. Parents, churches, schools, and politicians must recognize the grave harm they do not only to the GLBTQ youth themselves, but also to their families and friends.
It is Mitchell Gold's expressed hope that families, church leaders, politicians, and school authorities will read his book. There is a desperate need for all of them to act to eliminate the violence inflicted on the millions of American GLBTQ teens by the very people charged with protecting them.
Must Read Book October 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book should be read by everyone. It should especailly be shared with clergy, school teachers and other people of authority. This book was transformative! I now understand the tremendous challenges faced by gay children growing up today. High school is difficult enough for the straight teenager, let alone te gay teenager. I learned a lot by reading this powerful and informative book. It is well written, interesting and easy to read. I will purchase several more copies to distribute to my friends and family.
Raising the Curtain on Growing Up Gay September 24, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Gold, Mitchell, editor with Mandy Drucker. "Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America", Greenleaf Book Group, 2008.
Raising the Curtain on Growing Up Gay
Amos Lassen
This is the book that many have waited for because we are in desperate need of ways to save our gay teens who suffer from depression, rejection, isolation, persecution and just plain fear. They often have nowhere to turn and no one to talk to. A large percentage of them turn to drugs and alcohol and some lean toward suicide. We know the causes---discrimination, bullying and homophobia (from their families and their peers) and these kids (as well as many adults) suffer great pain. We need to find ways t give them the love and support that they need.
"Crisis" was written as an effort to help and is directed at those who cause harm to our youth and is a wonderful aid for clergy, parents and teachers and counselors who have no idea to deal with the issues. Forty diverse stories gave us a background. We learn the problems that many had accepting themselves and we have looks at what parents and straight clergy have to say by offering support and looking at gay people for what they are--human beings who are guaranteed equal rights but may not get them because they are guilty of loving people of the same sex as they are.
As people it is our responsibility to learn about gay people, teach one another what we know and make sure that the next generation understands the meaning of diversity and difference in order that the future generations will not have to face the problems that others have felt. If we commit ourselves to changing the way things are, it is our duty to rid the world of prejudice.
It's a pity that we have not always has this book because if we had, many would have understood the pain that is felt by our GLBT youth. We know that many feel that they are not worthy of our love because they are afraid of rejection. They want to be able to hold jobs, to love, to practice their faith. We need to give them the love they need as parents and allies so that they can feel complete and not alone. This book is a way to start. Some of the stories will break your heart and others will shine a light on you. If you are interested in saving children and if you buy no other book this year, this is the one that should be in your personal library.
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