The Hickory Daily Record published a story this morning on “Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay In America.”
A panel discussion on the book will be held Thursday evening, Dec. 18, at Hickory’s Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse Gallery, 29 2nd Street NW in Downtown Hickory, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Writer Ragan Robinson did a great job:
Book born of ‘a sense of urgency’
Discussion aims to put a human face on the issue of homosexuality, bigotry
by Ragan Robinson . Dec. 16HICKORY – Not long ago, Mitchell Gold got a note from an 80-year-old woman in Winston-Salem. She wrote that she’d never thought about homosexuality except to be judgmental.
The book Gold edited and paid to publish changed that.
“Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America” features pieces contributed by names readers will recognize, such as Barney Frank and Martina Navratilova.
“A lot of them I knew already,” Gold said. “As soon as I told them what I was doing, they said, ‘That’s exactly what America needs to heal.’”
Far more common are stories from everyday people including writers, editors, ministers, students, doctors and others. Most suffered a crisis, a “black cloud,” Gold calls it in his own story, not because they were homosexual, but because of the fear their world — families, friends, the people they loved — would reject them because of it.
Gay author Rich Merritt (”Code of Conduct”, “Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star”) will take a “homecoming” tour through North and South Carolina this weekend.
EqualityNC, a state-wide LGBT lobbying, advocacy & education organization, has released the schedule for 
