Episode Details

Steven C. Law, author of the new book, THE STORY OF BOB (Feb. 16, 2026)? Steven tells the life of Reverend Robert W. Wood: a World War II veteran, ordained Christian minister, and early gay rights advocate who chose visibility at a time when silence was often the only path to survival. In 1960—nearly a decade before Stonewall—Wood published Christ and the Homosexual, a radical act that openly affirmed gay people within a religious world that overwhelmingly rejected them.Drawing from intimate interviews and deep archival research, Law traces Wood’s life from his early awareness of his identity, through wartime service, to his involvement with the Mattachine Society and his quiet but consequential role in shaping early LGBTQ+ advocacy. Wood was never famous, never safe, and never passive. His activism came with real costs—professional, personal, and spiritual.What makes The Story of Bob especially compelling for LGBTQ+ readers is its human scale. This is not a mythic hero’s tale, but the story of a gay man navigating love, faith, fear, desire, and integrity in a world that offered him very few models for living openly. The book restores Bob to queer history as someone who lived authentically when doing so could cost everything.

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