From Library Journal
This is the account of a deeply religious man's coming to terms with his gayness and the impact that process had on his life. A former ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Billy Graham, and other religious-right personalities, White offers a compelling story; gay readers raised in a fundamentalist Christian environment will find themselves saying, "That happened to me." Yet the book's subtitle is somewhat misleading. This is not really so much about being gay and Christian in America as it is the story of one individual's struggles. To describe what it means to be gay and Christian is truly a difficult task; perhaps there is no one concrete definition. Recommended for public, academic, and theological libraries and gay/lesbian resource centers.Lee Arnold, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, PhiladelphiaCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
There are plenty of clergymen's coming-out stories (most by Anglican priests) and plenty of gay replies to Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and other antigay Christian evangelists, but on both counts, this is the one everybody's been waiting for. Raised in the same mold as those religious-right leaders, White was their colleague and collaborator. He ghostwrote two books for Falwell (including Mr. Moral Majority's "autobiography"), one for Robertson, and speeches for nonclerical gay-baiter Ollie North and the less problematic Billy Graham. Before the ghosting, White pursued a hectically successful career as an evangelical filmmaker, conference and retreat organizer, and occasional preacher. All the while, he, a married man with two children, struggled with homosexuality, which he says he felt from his earliest awareness of sexual consciousness. He lasted 25 years as a committed family man before he and long-suffering wife Lyla agreed he had to come out completely and divorced. Although decidedly egotistical (we especially wish White would say more about his heroic wife), this autobiography is moving, inspirational, and not a little spectacular--which makes it all the more readable. Ray Olson


From Kirkus Reviews
Mel White, an evangelical minister and former ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and other prominent leaders of the religious right, here describes his half-century-long struggle to accept himself as a gay Christian. Deeply angered by the recent gay-bashing tactics of his former clients, White says he could stand to ``be a ghost no longer''; after years in the closet, writing for others, he finally had to tell his own story. He leads us though his shame-ridden adolescence, his anguishing attempts to make his marriage work, his high-speed career as a Christian writer and minister, and, perhaps most painfully, his attempts to ``cure'' himself of homosexuality through prayer, electric-shock therapy, and guilt. White's is the story of a ``man of God'' enduring nearly unbearable suffering before finding the strength to preach the good news. It is also a coming-out story. White's style suffers, at points, from the pitfalls of clich‚ and polemical simplification. Yet his ability to reconcile his divergent identities, as preacher and gay man, gives his voice a unique, impassioned confidence. His tale is inspired, and strengthened, by a commitment to two warring communities. He seeks acceptance and civil rights for other gay men and lesbians yet also wants to deliver his fellow Christians from their own hatred. Readers will be moved by White's search for an accepting community, which he finally finds in the Metropolitan Community Church, a gay and lesbian nondenominational Christian congregation. Stranger at the Gate is likely to provoke useful dialogue among mainstream Christians and to offer unsentimental hope and comfort to many who are struggling to reconcile homosexual desires with hostile, yet deeply valued, religious traditions. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
As seen on 60 Minutes. Until Christmas Eve 1991, Mel White was regarded by the leaders of the religious right as one of their most talented and productive supporters. He penned speeches for Ollie North, was a ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell, worked with Jim Bakker. What they didn't know is that Mel White--evangelical minister, committed Christian, family man--is gay. In this book, White details his twenty-five years of being counseled, exorcised, electric-shocked, prayed for, and nearly driven to suicide because his church said homosexuality was wrong. His salvation--to be openly gay and Christian--is much more than a unique coming-out story. "Fascinating... harrowing... a remarkable and important story." --Dallas Morning News

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Few issues divide our country more dangerously today than does the question of homosexuality and the conflict between the concept of family values and the individual rights of gays and lesbians. Families are divided, careers are ruined, lives are lost - all in the struggle between beliefs founded in tradition and those based on personal freedom. Spearheading the fight against the increasingly vocal homosexual community are the leaders of the so-called "religious right," men and women who denounce gays and lesbians from their pulpits and encourage their followers to enact laws against them. Perhaps no one is better qualified to write about these issues and the conflicts they engender than Mel White. He was born into a conservative Christian home and educated in conservative Christian schools and churches. He met his wife there, and together they raised their children to believe in God and to follow a Christian lifestyle. He worked within the church as a filmmaker and writer, and eventually became a ghostwriter of books, autobiographies, and speeches for such noted figures in the religious right as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Billy Graham. But all that time Mel White had a secret. He was gay. In this remarkable book, Mel White looks at his own life in the church and details the struggles he went through to deny and overcome his own natural sexual desires. And in ways sure to anger many of the people he used to know best, he provides a firsthand look at the teachings and workings of the religious right today, showing how they use their power first to politicize their followers and then, using these politics, to spearhead fund-raising efforts. Most specifically, he examines the methods they use to create a campaign of hate and fear against homosexuals. It is a deeply personal story of torment and triumph, as well as a frightening examination of the anti-homosexual tactics of the religious right and a prophetic look at where they might lead our nation. Both aut

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

White, a former ghostwriter for such prominent Christian conservatives as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Oliver North, details in this melodramatic, sentimental but absorbing autobiography his own troubling, yet ultimately empowering acknowledgement of his homosexuality. White's account of his futile attempts to deny or ``cure'' his desires--through life as a husband and father, through prayer and self-denial, even through shock therapy--is affecting if overdrawn; more interesting is his success in finally reconciling his faith with his sexuality. Such a reconciliation rested in part upon White's recognition that only through distorting the Bible can one find prohibitions against homosexuality there. That White himself, while still closeted and struggling, worked for those most responsible for perpetuating such disinformation is one of the more pungent ironies in the book; it is startling to read that Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell's agitprop denunciation of ``perverts'' purportedly overrode his nobler impulses towards tolerance and compassion. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour. (Apr.)

Library Journal