Gays and Grays

Book excerpt: Most Holy Redeemer Parish in San Francisco is in the center of the world's first gay neighborhood, The Castro, and was the center of the hostility to the arriving gay population in the 1970s. Author Father Donal Godfrey shows how, over time, the old time parishioners, or "the gray," bonded with the new comers, "the gay," particularly in a joint compassionate response to the crisis of AIDS. Most Holy Redeemer was changed from a dying parish to a vital place where gay and straight people together created something new.