022 edition includes an update from the children 40 years later!
In 1977 a law was passed in Florida banning discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodation based on sexuality. This law was an important step towards respecting gay and lesbian civil rights. However, immediately after it was passed, a group called Save Our Children vowed to overturn the law. This group stirred up so much fear regarding the idea of a gay role model, such as a teacher, interacting with children that the gay-rights ordinance was repealed.
In 1979 Joe Gantz decided to show more realistic and positive gay role models than the distorted images promoted by the campaign, by finding families raising children in openly gay homes and asking them to tell their story. A Secret I Can't Tell follows five families raising children in homes where one or both parents were not hiding their homosexuality. This book was first published in 1983, and it's being republished in 2022 with an update from many of the children 40 years later.
A Secret I Can't Tell is a time capsule which gives insight into the intense stress and uncommon bravery that gay and lesbian couples and their children had to go through as pioneers in this movement. The stories told by these kids and their parents can help us appreciate the many challenges that gay families had to deal with as the first wave of families living in openly gay and lesbian homes.
"A moving testimony to the courage, determination and inventiveness of same-sex parents who battled against all odds to create loving happy families. A Secret I Can't Tell shows how the families Joe Gantz first met four decades ago have gone from being rare and frowned upon to becoming an increasingly common, accepted and successful facet of family diversity in modern America. Bravo!"
- Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner and gay-rights activist
"As the song says, "Sons of the thief, sons of the saint, who is the child with no complaint" -- and it turns out that four decades ago, as now, the kids of pioneering gay parents had their share of complaints, too, alongside joys, triumphs, and love. All are skillfully rendered in the family vignettes that make up the bulk of A Secret I Can't Tell. Joe Gantz's original interviews and later updates confirm what the evidence, expertise, and experience of the intervening years have shown: despite discrimination, gay parents are doing a great job, their kids are okay, and families are, well, families. All deserve love, respect, and support."
-Evan Wolfson, internationally recognized civil rights lawyer and strategist. He was the founder and president of Freedom to Marry, the pioneering campaign which drove the successful strategy that won same-sex couples the right to marry throughout the United States.
"Although our planet continues to progress each year towards a state of greater sexual toleration and respect, we must remember that, back in the 1970s and 1980s, lesbian and gay mothers and fathers suffered tremendous shame for having challenged the traditional model of heterosexual parenting. In this gripping book, Joe Gantz has chronicled his pioneering research work, providing us with a detailed portrait of the lives and minds of those who challenged the unquestioned standards of yesteryear. As both a psychotherapist and a sexologist, I hold this iconic book in very high regard indeed."
- Professor Brett Kahr, Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology in London, and Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis and Mental Health at Regent's University London, and author of Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head?: The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies.
