A Guide For the Naïve Homosexual
Preface
About This Recreation

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©1971-2017 Roedy Green of Canadian Mind Products

Preface

Back in 1969 I wrote a book called A Guide For The Naive Homosexual which most people referred to as The Blurb. What follows is the 11th revision of A Guide For The Naive Homosexual self-published in 1971-03. In earlier revisions, it was known as A Gay Guide. It is of interest mainly as a historical document as part of the Gay Tides project to document our gay past. A lot has changed since then. It shows just how closeted and frightened homosexuals were in the late 60s prior to Stonewall. When I wrote this, it was considered ultra radical left. Now it appears reactionary. Even so, it stands up rather well as a metaphor for facing any fearful life change. The original was printed on goldenrod paper and typeset all in upper case in microscopic type, a limitation of the punch-card technology of that time and printed all in upper case on an IBM (International Business Machines) 407 lister. It looked like this:

blurb sample font

I have left it almost unchanged from the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scan, except for correcting typos and adding lower case and selecting a larger font. Other errors I have left untouched, such as confusing guilt and shame and being unduly hard on the Christians rather than the Kristians. This essay was written before we knew about HIV/AIDS and hence is overly casual about sex. I also painted an overly rosy picture of both what gays were like and what help I could actually deliver. For example, when I wrote the eleventh revision, I presumed the AA group and the chess club would soon take off. I wrote as if they already had. They never did. I made it sound as if all gays were just as altruistic as my closest friends.

I never did write another revision. I became too busy as chairman of G*A*T*E trying to end discrimination against gays.

You might notice a certain unevenness of style. That is because there were contributors who preferred to remain anonymous. Perhaps now they may be more willing to step forward and take a bow for the more memorable lines such as blackmail each other for amusement, smooth style, not crunchy please and put an a sou’ wester and gumboots and chase him around the room beating him with a wet salmon.

blurb front
front cover		 blurb back
back cover
Layout and art work by Robert Benn Best.

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