"This book represents a gathering of the core of his writings which span more than a half century. It chronicles his fight for personal freedom as a gay man growing up in America during the years when being gay was looked upon as being a deviant, criminal, or mentally ill. It reflects on life in the 1960s: social activism, demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, the struggle for Civil Rights, the influence of Eastern spiritual thought, and his participation in the early years of the Gay Rights movement when Harvey Milk walked the streets of the Castro, the first gay neighborhood in America"--