Eight portraits from Mark Thompson's Fellow Travelers photo exhibition are on display on the wall near the library's second-floor conference room. The photographs are of men featured in his book, Gay Soul.
Mark Thompson (1952-2016) was born and raised on the Monterey Peninsula. He joined The Advocate as writer-editor in 1975 and remained there for 20 years. His books on gay culture include the trilogy Gay Spirit, Gay Soul, and Gay Body as well as The Fire in the Moonlight: Stories from the Radical Faeries; Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice; and Long Road to Freedom: The Advocate History of the Gay and Lesbian Movement. He was also an avid photographer. Thompson died a year after his companion and husband, Malcolm Boyd, an Episcopal priest and an influential gay figure in religion, passed away.
Mark Thompson donated the fifteen photographs from his original exhibition and three boxes of materials to The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion (CLGS) in November 2011. The collection consists of photographs and working files for Thompson's book Gay Soul, publicity and drafts of Gay Spirit, and an oral history. The collection is managed by the GTU Archives.
This exhibition is part of the celebration in October of American Archives Month and Theological Libraries Month and will extend through the school year. The display is courtesy of CLGS.
(Photo of Paul Monette, Los Angeles, CA, 1992)