Is It A Choice?
Answers to 300 of the Most Frequently Asked Questions About Gay and Lesbian People
Press Release
HarperSanFrancisco
2005
From Eric Marcus:
The idea for a basic book about homosexuality and gay people came to me while I was on the media tour for my first book, The Male Couple’s Guide. I quickly discovered that none of the reporters (and very few of the callers on the radio and television call-in shows) had any interest in talking about the substance of my book. I was fully prepared to talk about the everyday challenges and complexities of couple life, but all anyone wanted to ask me about was “How do you get to be gay?” “How did your parents react?” “Is homosexuality a sin?” and “Is it a choice?”
Every once in a while I did get a question about couple life. On several occasions I was asked “Who plays the husband and who plays the wife?” I tried my best to answer these questions with a smile—which is something I learned from Amy Ashworth, an early PFLAG leader—but there were times that I really struggled not to roll my eyes.
I was convinced that the book I had in mind would be an easy sell. But it wasn't. The attitude of the New York editors who saw the proposal and turned it down was: “Everybody already knows everything there is to know.” I rolled my eyes plenty over that. But I didn't give up and eventually found an editor who understood that there was both a need and a market for such a book. The editor, Barbara Moulton, is a heterosexual woman. All the editors who had turned down the book were gay. I'll leave the analysis to someone else.
Barbara not only bought the book, she also came up with the idea for the question and answer format, which lets readers zero in on the information they need.
The first edition of Is It A Choice? was published in 1993. I updated the book in 1999 and again in 2005. It's my best-selling book (aside from the Greg Louganis autobiography) and has been published in several different languages, including Hebrew, Spanish, Thai, Japanese, and Polish. I also get more e-mail about this book than any other, and these days the notes come from as far away as Nepal and Bangladesh.
The world has changed dramatically for gay men and lesbians since I wrote the original edition of Is It a Choice?, but people are still asking many of the same questions they were back in 1988. Part of the problem is that we've not come very far in how we educate young people about sexuality and sexual orientation. In fact, I think we're doing a worse job today than back in the late 1980s. We're a very long way from a day when everybody already knows all the answers to the questions in Is It A Choice?
Praise for Is It A Choice?
“Dear Readers: The answers to all the questions you've ever had about homosexuality but were afraid to ask are finally in one book: Is It A Choice?”
— Dear Abby, Advice Columnist
“Is It A Choice? was very empowering for me. It's a book I've happily recommended to many gay people and their loved ones.”
— Greg Louganis, Four-time Olympic gold-medal diving champion
“Straight answers to gay questions... Timely and welcome, candid and informative, this book will do much to demystify homosexuality, especially if you think you know it all.”
— Paulette Goodman, Past-president of the Federation of Parents, Friends, and Families of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG)
“Marcus think and writes in superbly clear prose. I highly recommend this book for all who are searching for answers to fundamental questions about homosexuality and lesbianism.”
— Dr. Evelyn Hooker, Former professor of psychology, UCLA, and pioneering researcher on gay men
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