An Extremely Generous Review of My Book in Commonweal

w/some well-taken criticisms:

Eve Tushnet is, as she puts it, “the poster child for a poster nobody wants on their wall.” Raised “somewhere between atheism and Reform Judaism” and moved to convert to Catholicism while a questioning bisexual sophomore at Yale, Tushnet has for the past ten years been the blogosphere’s resident celibate lesbian.

As readers of Commonweal and a host of other publications know, she writes with a style that is at once self-deprecating and confident, earnest and wickedly witty. In Gay and Catholic, her first book, she stays true to form.

more (and yikes, I totally see why Freeman read the “temptations to lust” sentence the way she did, but that’s because it’s really badly-written! I meant something more like, “…temptations to lust [and, I should have added, temptations to despair over lust], which can then sometimes lead people to leave the church.” I don’t think lust, or despair for that matter, makes you “not Catholic” or less-Catholic or outside the church, but I absolutely see how the sentence came across that way. I don’t imagine that would resolve Freeman’s issues with my stance but figured I should clear it up. Anyway I really appreciated this piece.)