Gale Chester Whittington, Author of "Beyond Normal, The Birth of Gay Pride"

Gale Chester Whittington’s triumphant memoir chronicles the author's teenage suicide attempt and then moves on to the real beginning of the Gay Liberation movement, pre-Stonewall, in 1969 San Francisco, where Mr. Whittington was fired for being openly gay. It's creative non-fiction, written like a novel, with a conservative alter-ego's thoughts inserted to keep it lively. CHF's groundbreaking openly gay philosophy—coming out en masse as a way to enlighten and change the world—leads his comrades to crown him “Gale the Liberator.” The author wrote this book to set the record straight, because little about the 1969 militant gay movement in the San Francisco Bay Area has been detailed in print. While many brave activists have contributed to the cause before and since, a close look shows how the militant side of gay liberation actually began within the bowels of San Francisco a few months before the New York Stonewall uprising.