New Book on Gay Men & Their Fathers

Insightful New Book on Gay Men and Their Relationship With Their Father to be Publishing

Hello everyone, my name is Tim Clausen, author of Love Together: Longtime Male Couples on Healthy Intimacy and Communication, which I self-published in 2014. Love Together (www.lovetogetherbook.com) continues to get superb reviews and to educate readers about committed same-sex love relationships. The second book in the trilogy of works on gay men’s relationships I am writing explores and offers fresh insights on the relationship between gay males and their father across the years. I am seeking assistance with the editing, typesetting, design, and production costs to bring this book to press and am offering cool rewards for helping out too!

 For this new work, I was fortunate to interview a remarkable assortment of gay men, including a recently married Combat Anesthesiologist/Commander in the US Naval Reserve, a well-known gay porn film director, a former Catholic priest, an Iraq war-veteran Army Major who was booed on national television at the 2011 Republican primary debate while asking a question about same-sex marriage, a South Dakota rodeo cowboy, a Kansas man whose father, through gender reassignment surgery, has now become his second mother, a man whose mother learned that his father had died in a traffic mishap just moments after her pregnancy with their son was confirmed, fathers who offered to purchase a hooker's services to turn their son heterosexual, and more. Readers will find their open and insightful sharing about their relationship with their dad to be by turns moving, poignant, inspiring, humorous, heartbreaking, profound and ultimately uplifting.

These men generously offer hard-won advice to others who may be struggling with issues like how and when to come out to their father, how to deal with unaccepting fathers and families, how to practice healthy self-care, and--since many of these men are now fathers themselves--how to be a loving and supportive dad.

I will be self-publishing this work next year, in 2017, and am seeking your help with the related editing, typesetting, layout, design, and production costs to get this book ship-shape and ready to print, on Amazon.
Every person who donates $35 or more will receive as a thank you a personally autographed copy of the book via USPS. Additional copies are included for those who contribute $100 or more. Everyone who makes a donation of any amount will be listed in the acknowledgements section of the book.

I know this new work is going to be especially helpful for gay teens, gay men, their fathers, and all who love and care about them and I'm very much looking forward to getting it completed and published. Your support of these published works is greatly appreciated, as we continue to make progress together, helping the world to become a better and more understanding place for LGBT people everywhere. Many thanks!



In the trilogy of books I am in the midst of researching, writing and publishing on contemporary gay men and their relationships, I'm currently 18 months and 73 completed interviews into book 2...  Following up on the success of Love Together: Longtime Male Couples on Healthy Intimacy and Communication, this new work sheds fresh light on a relatively under-explored and important topic, that of gay men and their relationship with their father across the years.

  It would be difficult to overestimate the gravity and significance of this profoundly powerful primary relationship, for better or worse, in the life of a gay man. It is probably also safe to assume that most heterosexual fathers take for granted that their sons will grow up to be heterosexual, and few dads, if any, are schooled in how to parent and effectively support a gay son. Having a gay child introduces a unique set of dynamics into the father-son relationship, and so it is not surprising that many of these relationships become rocky or problematic and offer special challenges for both dad and son. 

 In these interviews you will find a vast range of father-son relationships represented, from fathers who were mostly or completely absent, to exemplary dads who are unconditionally loving, accepting, and supportive, to fathers who were violent alcoholics, to those who outright disowned their son once the son's sexual orientation came to light. Many gay men experienced significant pain and trauma in their relationship with their dad, and have grown up lacking the type of love and support and mentoring they deserved to receive from the all-important first man in their life. Some were fortunate to find the support and acceptance they needed from a grandfather or stepdad. It was especially heartwarming to interview many gay men whose fathers were and are model dads, and any of whom would be qualified to write the definitive textbook on healthy parenting of a gay son.

In this work you will find some remarkable coming out stories:  

 "When I went to my dad's place I thought, "This will probably be the last time that we speak..." I was prepared for that actually. When I sat down on the hearth to tell him, it was small talk at first. He asked me how my son was, and I said, "He's good. But things are about to change drastically," and he looked at me. He was sitting on the couch eating a bowl of chili off a TV tray. I said, "You know how I used to stay up in my room all the time and didn't come out much?," and he said, "Yeah." I said, "It was because I was always fighting something, and I just can't fight it any more. I'm gay." I started trembling a little bit when I said it and I couldn't tell what was going on in his head when I said it. So when he stood up, I was bracing myself for a punch and I told myself, "Alright, you take one punch but that's it... Then you walk out." But he didn't do that. He came over and hugged me, and as I said before, I can think of five times in my life he'd ever done that. He had never kissed me and he kissed my cheek. First time ever in my life. He was just super supportive."
 
Along with weightier material, funny anecdotes abound:

 "In eighth grade in middle school I was in Cinderella. I got to play Prince Charming, and of course Prince Charming has to wear this tunic and these tights. My dad said, "Matt, you're going to high school next year, so here's a sure-fire way to get those girls a droolin'... Son, we just take a sausage and tape it to the inside of your leg, and when you put on those tights and walk out there, they won't know what hit 'em!"

 I was truly fortunate to interview a remarkable assortment of gay men for this work, including a recently married Combat Anesthesiologist/Commander in the US Naval Reserve, a well-known gay porn film director, a former Catholic priest, an Iraq war veteran Army Major who was booed on national television at the 2011 Republican primary debate while asking a question about same-sex marriage, a South Dakota rodeo cowboy, a Kansas man whose father, through gender reassignment surgery, has now become his second mother, a man whose mother learned that his father had died in a traffic mishap just moments after her pregnancy with their son was confirmed, fathers who offered to purchase a hooker's services to turn their son heterosexual, and many more. The interviews are raw, honest, uncensored, powerful, and compelling. It was gratifying to be able to get such open and candid sharing from the men I spoke with.

 Throughout these interviews, I was repeatedly impressed by how resolutely many of these men have worked to recover from sometimes-terrible childhoods; how loving and forgiving some have been to fathers who were anything but loving to them. One interviewee who was physically and sexually abused by his father for years closed his interview with this:

 "At the end of the day, even if you don't have a relationship with your father, forgive him and love him. That's huge in a father-son relationship. Some fathers just don't know how to deal with a gay son. I don't want to live my life with regrets and I believe that being unwilling to forgive him was holding me back as a person. Forgiving my father opened the door to freedom for me. I had to learn to love my father, even if he wasn't sorry."

 These men generously offer hard-won advice to others who may be struggling with issues like how and when to come out to their father, how to deal with unaccepting fathers and families, how to practice healthy self-care, and--since many of these men are now fathers themselves--how to be a loving and supportive dad.

 I will be including my own father story too. My dad and I did not become close until after my mother died in 2001. We ending up spending a lot of time together as he recovered from a major stroke in 2002, and in the process we developed a deep and beautiful friendship. Our last moments together were extraordinarily sweet and absolutely unforgettable.


 The just-right title for this new book came to me recently, as did the magnificent cover photo from a father in Canada. As with Love Together, I plan to self-publish this new work on Amazon. It will be completed and ready to publish next year in 2017, though it's still too early to provide an exact publication date yet. The quality of the material will easily rival or exceed that in Love Together:

 Since it's publication in 2014, Love Together: Longtime Male Couples on Healthy Intimacy and Communication (www.lovetogetherbook.com) continues to garner impressive reviews and to educate people about committed same-sex love relationships. A Midwest pediatrician wrote this about the book:

 "A teenage family friend borrowed my first copy (I now have three on constant loan out), and when I asked his thoughts, he said the book gave him hope. Growing up in a conservative Midwestern community, he didn't know what his life could or would look like as a gay man. As a middle aged, straight woman, I could not guide him nor show him enough real-world examples of happy men in love. As he told me, reading this book showed him that his future was as bright and as limitless as anyone else, that lifelong love and happiness are attainable despite the fact that he saw few examples to relate to in his daily life. This is a very powerful book."

I am looking forward to getting this new work completed and published. I know it will be especially helpful for gay teens, gay men, their fathers, and for those who love and care about them. I am producing this book, like the first one, on a shoestring budget, with a lot of enthusiasm, in my off hours. (Though I work full-time in sales, working on these books is my true calling!) There are as yet no universities or prestigious foundations sponsoring my work, though more than one person--most recently a PhD--has informed me that my research is rigorous enough to be worthy of such official backing and support.

 The publishing of Love Together was made possible with the help and support of a number of generous people who contributed towards the editing, typesetting, design, and other production related costs, purchasing a Library of Congress number, etc... It has been inspiring to see several artist friends launch GoFundMe pages, to give birth to their newest CD, documentary, or book, and I love the idea of inviting a community of forward-thinking people to take part in giving birth to substantial new works. And so, I'm stepping out in faith here and asking for your assistance and help with the editing, typesetting, design and aforementioned publishing-related costs for this new book. And yes, there definitely are rewards-perks for donating! EVERYONE who contributes will have their name listed in the acknowledgements section of the book. For anyone donating $35 or more, I will mail you an autographed copy of the book upon publication as a thank you. For folks donating $100 or more, I will be happy to mail you two autographed copies. For $200 or more, you will receive three autographed copies. Every single donation is a help, and no donation is too small or too large.

These books on gay men and their relationships are making a difference in the world, by changing lives and attitudes in a very positive way. Thank you in advance for considering taking part, and please feel free to share this page with your friends and family members, to those who may want to be a part of the publishing process, and get their very own autographed copy of the book for helping too! I appreciate your support of these published works, as we continue to make progress together, helping the world to become a better and more understanding place for LGBT people everywhere.

Many thanks!

Tim Clausen

Jazz Pianist, Author, and Founder & Facilitator of the Milwaukee Gay Fathers Group from 1995-2004

www.timclausen.com