Reading 'The Lord Won't Mind' was formative for me when I was a young intelligence professional serving during the Cold War. Charlie and Peter's struggles felt so real and relevant to me, especially after I failed a polygraph and the FBI examiner told me to my face that he believed I was gay.

I didn't have things as bad as I would have had a generation before, but I lived in nervous fear until I was able to resign my commission without a disgraceful discharge, and seek safety in NYC's gay world.

Charlie and Peter were so influential to my world view. The fact that I became an activist was in some part due to them, to wishing to help build a world more loving toward them, a world where they could live in peace.

As you observe so well, that desire is political — intensely political.

Merrick didn't write pages of exposition about politics. He didn't have to, because he showed us so well.