A Prince of a Boy - Brian McNaught’s Memoir

05/08/2025

My recording of “A Prince of a Boy” is now available through Audible or Amazon.

Try Audible free for 30 days! Start listening to best-selling audiobooks, exclusive Originals, and free podcasts with the Audible app.

05/02/2025

W.H. Auden, poet laureate of the U.K. was invited to Marquette to speak. I went to the dean of journalism and asked, “Dean, why wouldn’t the university allow Alan Ginsberg to speak, but they will W.H. Auden?” The dean replied, “I believe it’s because Auden is a poet who happens to be a homos*xual, and Ginsberg is a homos*xual who happens to be a poet.”`
I learned from him that my s*xuality would be excused if it wasn’t my identity. However, it would be my identity, and I was invited to speak around the world because I was Gay, and not despite it.

A Prince of a Boy

05/02/2025

https://www.amazon.com/Prince-Boy-Catholic-Helped-Change/dp/B0DQJ8QP6H

An altar boy is fired by the church for saying he is gay. The unintended career that resulted ensured the word “gay” would be said with understanding and respect in churches, universities, and corporate offices in Mumbai, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and North America. As a ....

05/01/2025

In case you missed it, and would like to see it, here’s the engaging conversation I had with charming Gay Catholic theologian, Jason Steidl Jack, co-sponsored by the LGBTQ Religious Archives, Dignity/National, and New Ways Ministry. It’s worth your time.

Acclaimed author and gay activist Brian McNaught, whose latest book is a memoir, “A Prince of Boy: How One Gay Catholic Helped Change the World,” is in conve...

05/01/2025

With friends, I’ll often ask, “What would you like the first line of your obit to say?” The question helps focus what we feel is the most significant thing about our lives.
People in their twenties or thirties often think about an accomplishment in which they take the most pride. “…made a million dollars before he was twenty.” “….climbed Mt. Everest at age twenty-five.”
Middle-aged people often think of their children, or perhaps something they did that made a difference in the lives of others. “…was a devoted wife and proud mother.” “…worked at the Red Cross for thirty years.”
Those of us over the age of sixty-five might focus on our lives from a different angle, thinking more about our personal growth. “…a man of faith but few words.”
I’d like my obit to say, “….known for being kind.” Loving kindness is what enables us to sing the song we were meant to sing, and to help others do the same. It manifests itself well in the telling of our stories, and in listening intently to the stories of others, even from those we feel are the most difficult to like. Once they’re allowed to express their anger and hatred, perhaps even of us, we find that behind the bluster beats the same heart, and the soul that links us as one.

“A Prince of a Boy”
Brian McNaught

03/01/2025

This two part interview with the amazing Suzanne Maggio offers a really intimate look at my life and spiritual beliefs. Suzanne loves “A Prince of a Boy - How One Gay Catholic Helped Change the World.

https://fromsparkstolight.buzzsprout.com/1921984/episodes/16704602-a-prince-of-a-boy-pt-1-brian-mcnaught

https://fromsparkstolight.buzzsprout.com/1921984/episodes/16704815-a-prince-of-a-boy-pt-2-brian-mcnaught

This is part two of a two part episode. If you haven't listened to part 1, go back and listen to that one first.When Brian McNaught was in eighth grade, Sister Claire Marie, IHM, a nun at his school in Birmingham, Michigan, pulled his mother aside...

01/20/2025

My fulltime focus, besides Ray and Sebastian, is finding my target audience for “A Prince of a Boy - How One Gay Catholic Helped Change the World.” Publishers today put the full weight of promotion on the authors. I’m now working on making it into an audiobook that I would narrate.
People have been wonderful in their responses, including a beautiful message from Gregory Maguire (“Wicked,”) women I dated in high school and college, Gay Historians, and friends from all eras of my life.
Here’s my brother Tom (on the left) and his husband Matthew Gilbert, former TV critic for the Boston Globe.

12/15/2024

Happy holidays, my friends. I have some fun news. My memoir was published “A Prince of a Boy” (that’s me) was published last week by Cascade Press and is now available on Amazon.
There’s a lot of living in this book.

07/05/2024

Every Fourth of July the family joined others at a beautiful property owned by the state gas and electric company. Our host, Art Crowley, who worked there, invited the McNaughts, Johansens, Curry’s, and Lopknows (sp?). We were in Michigan overlooking the Tippy Dam on the Manistee River, and we had a grand time.
Do you see the man at the end? That’s Bud. I’m six down from him. One day, handsome, s*xy Bud was taking a nap in the men’s dormitory. He laid there nearly naked, covered by a towel, and I so wanted to stop, stare, and get in bed with him. I knew that the lustful feelings I had for Bud could not be shared even though all that I imagined doing was the two of us being naked, spooning, and feeling the freedom to explore each other’s bodies.
Heteros*xual adults may think that gay male youth are having thoughts of a**l s*x or oral s*x. I didn’t even know what they were and if you told me I would have been terrified by the idea of someone pushing their p***s into my butt hole, and I would have been confused by the world “blow.” Do I really just blow on a guy’s p***s?
I wouldn’t get my answers to those questions at Tippy Dam.

05/17/2024

Not everyone has happy memories of their childhood. I know how privileged I was to live in a safe neighborhood in Flint, MI, to have friends that I cared about and who cared about me, to have the freedom to go outside at night to catch fireflies or play Kick the Can. I have no negative memories of my life at 802 Blanchard. The little girl on the far left was my girlfriend, Martha Halligan. You see us holding hands and how excited about the moment I was? At the front right of the photo is my younger brother, Tommy, who just wrote me the most wonderful e-mail telling me what a great older brother I was to him. I’ve always wanted that to be true but his confirmation meant a lot.
This picture was probably taken on Easter Sunday. You see the tall blond guy in the back row? His name was Eric Warren and he was our neighborhood’s Troy Donahue. I had a crush on him but didn’t know what a crush was at the time. I just know that when I walked past his house on the way to see Martha I hoped he’d be out in his driveway in a sleeveless t-shirt playing basketball.
The girl in the very center is my sister, Kathy, whose death I grieved nearly three years ago. She took me everywhere with her, including Elvis Presley movies at which I was instructed to scream with excitement. At her Celebration of Life we ended with Elvis singing, “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” I cried. The little girl in the baby carriage is my youngest sister, Maureen. My older brother Michael is standing next to his friend Troy Donahue.
I always assumed that everyone’s life was like mine. We could have been any of the idealized families on television. I think those experiences perhaps made it more difficult for me to come out because I was giving up so much approval and advantage, but it also made me a safe messenger whose life experiences were non-threatening to college and corporate audiences.

03/06/2024

When I look at one of the many orchids on the trees around our house in Wilton Manors, FL, I think about how much my mother would love them. I don’t have the same warm fuzzy feeling about my dad, but I loved him and know that despite his inability to say so, he loved me too. Mom was Dad’s ambassador to me and my siblings, reminding us, “Your father loves you very much.”
I’m really excited about the publication of my memoir this year because I’m pleased with the way I tell my story. I do that by telling lots of stories, including those about Mom and Dad. I wonder if they would be pleased. It took them a while to see my work as an educator on LGBTQ issues as an actual profession.
My guess that this is true for many people in their mid seventies, but I’ve been having some wonderful recollections of the people, places and things that made up my life. Most of it isn’t newsworthy, but they’re each a piece of the Brian McNaught puzzle. I live in gratitude for it all.