I was born in the Bronx, and attended Columbia College for a B.A. in English, and NYU for graduate work in English. I moved to Los Angeles to become a journalist for the
L.A. Weekly
and
L.A. Times , and helped open and run Highways Performance Art Space for a decade. I wrote two books,
Sacred Lips of the Bronx
(St. Martin’s Press, 1994), and the social history monograph, Sex
Between Men: An Intimate History of the Sex Lives of Gay Men, Postwar to Present (HarperSan Francisco, 1997).
Wanting to deepen my gay activism, I began gay-affirmative therapy and was introduced to the notion of facing my “shadow” and transforming unfinished family business into experiences of greater strength, love and creativity. I returned to school to receive an M.A. in Clinical Psychology at Antioch University and a Ph.D. at Pacifica Graduate Institute. I wrote a dissertation on the idea of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche as a forerunner of what we today might call “gay soul-making.”
I am currently completing a memoir about how I developed LGBT-Affirmative psychotherapy at Antioch University entitled Education of the Heart.
In 2005, I founded the Antioch LGBT Specialization in Clinical Psychology, the first LGBT-Affirmative psychology program in Clinical Psychology in the country. In 2011, I co-founded Colors LGBTQ Youth Counseling Center. In 2005, I became a founding member of the Institute for Uranian Psychoanalysis, the first psychoanalytic institute devoted to deepening gay personhood.
Over the last year, I have been the moderator for the Gay-Centered Inner Work Club during the first Saturday of every month at Plummer Park, which focuses on same-sex love and racial justice issues.