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He survived a turbulent childhood in war-torn London, earneddegrees with honors from Cambridge University, was ordained in the Church ofEngland, became an Anglican worker-priest, and emigrated to the UnitedStates.

He has been a prolific broadcaster for theBBC, helped organize the Public Broadcasting System in America, was a foundingchairman of National Public Radio, and became a senior management consultant for theCorporation for Public Broadcasting.

He designedand directed the first system of suicide and crisis counseling centers in California(a model for later centers nationwide) and helped found the Parsonage, anEpiscopalian ministry on behalf of gay rights in the Castro section of SanFrancisco. And all the while, Bernard Duncan Mayes struggled to reconcile his viewson sexuality--and his experience as a gay man--with his theological and culturalbeliefs.

In an entirely honest and engagingvoice, Mayes offers considerably more than autobiographical recollections of hislife as priest, journalist, university teacher and administrator, and gay rightsactivist. Throughout Escaping God's Closet, Bernard Mayes recounts how social anddoctrinal oppression posed fundamental challenges to his own belief system, but ledhim to revelations about sexuality, Christianity, and the nature of human existenceitself.