Books
New book chronicles founding of gay-owned Falls Church News-Press
Nick Benton emerged as major influencer and nurturer of local talent

The History Press released a book by D.C.-area journalist Charlie Clark in October entitled, “The Life and Times of the Falls Church News-Press” (a 192 page paperback).
The News-Press was founded in 1991 by journalist and gay activist Nicholas Benton and has published more than 1,700 consecutive weekly editions since serving the inside-the-beltway Northern Virginia suburb of the City of Falls Church, a mere seven miles from the White House.
In its masthead, the News-Press says of itself, “Since 1991, an award-winning LGBT-owned general interest community newspaper.” It has been named the Business of the Year twice and Benton the Person of the Year by the Falls Church City Council. These are selected excerpts from the Clark book:
“Its founder, Nicholas F. Benton, is a native Californian, college baseball player, degreed master of divinity, gay activist and journalist born “with printer’s ink in his veins” – or so he suspects. He launched the Falls Church News-Press largely as a one-man band. But with unflagging energy, he emerged as a major influencer and talent nurturer.
“Benton knows the key players, hosts frequent parties and can be see walking the streets and dining at eateries that make Falls Church homey. In editorials written every week by Benton himself, the editor strives to protect the city’s prize schools by pressing for property tax revenues and favoring development in the occasional battles with traditionalists who treasure the residential village. He made his mark on zoning disputes over how to tastefully attract commercial development. News-Press news sections combine small-town intimate coverage – plenty of photographs of smiling residents lined up for the camera – with exclusive accounts of action by the city council and the school board (at whose meetings Benton is sometimes the only member in attendance)….
“Some say it’s a miracle that Benton’s close-to-home news organ – backed neither by inherited wealth nor corporate investors – has survived three decades, given the current death knells for local news outlets…. The book you hold relays the tale of how Benton pulled things off. He takes virtually no vacations (beyond a few weekends). He pays staff writers (and offers health insurance) rather than engaging too many volunteers. He hires and mentors high school students. He gives the paper out for free and publishes letters that criticize. He donates to charities and cultivates youth readers by boosting high school and Little League sports, holiday parades, scouting and local history. His team covers charities, efforts to aid the homeless, published authors, theater productions, demands for low-income housing, struggling small businesses, gay rights and wars over parking. And Benton invites the public to his office parties..
“The News-Press is one of the things that make Falls Church special,” Mayor Dave Tarter told me as this book was in preparation. “The paper reinforces and enhances the sense of community of shared experiences” in covering stories that the Washington Post would not make space for. “It is a labor of love for Nick Benton, and it shows. Whether you love it or hate it, everyone reads the News-Press…”
“…Benton enrolled at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley (class of 1969). This brought him to the University of California’s flagship school at the height of the antiwar, civil rights and student power protests, a time when the smell of the national guardsmen’s tear gas was familiar on campus. Benton was awarded his master of divinity diploma cum laude on June 13, 1969 (it is framed and displayed today in the News-Press office. He worked as a youth minister for three years at seminary but never pursued that as a career. He would later consider his newspaper ownership a close substitute to ministry…
“Benton remained in the Bay Area and worked for the famous alternative weekly, the Berkeley Barb, enjoying the freedom to publish on counterculture subjects from women’s liberation to rock music…While at the Barb Benton also came out as gay, just before the 1969 Stonewall Riot in New York’s Greenwich Village that launched the gay right movement. His articles, he later wrote, “promoted the notion that fully actualized, gay liberation had the potential to be socially transformative.” He penned the editorial for the first edition of the Gay Sunshine newspaper, and he coproduced a pair of issues of his own fledgling gay newspaper, the Effeminist…
“… By 1987, he had incorporated his own news service…It became the context for his decision in early December 1990 to launch the News-Press. He would pull it off by charming volunteer labor and combining it with his own seven-days-a-week style. Another secret to Benton’s success: he is “frugal.” There were no desks in the office, just boards and folding chairs. “Editor in Chief Nick Benton is too modest to blow his own horn,” wrote reader Robert O. Beach in a letter published in March 1998. “But he deserves tremendous credit for the vital contribution the News-Press makes to our community.”
“Environmental consultant and history activist Dave Eckert goes further. “The News-Press became the focal point of Falls Church,” he said in 2022. “Nick Benton wanted to do good journalism, get readers and advertisements, but in many ways the paper brought the city together. And in many ways it drove it apart.”
“… ‘We worked all night on that first issue,’ Benton recalled, ‘and as the deadline approached, as dawn began to break on March 27, we looked out our second-story windows to see that the cherry blossom trees on North Virginia Avenue had blossomed overnight. That was our sign to press ahead.’
“After the proverbial all-nighter, his team of three drove to Gaithersburg, Md., to the Comprint Co. plant to witness the maiden print run. ‘When the press bell rang and everything started to move, it was a very special moment,’ Benton remembered. ‘As the papers started chugging onto a conveyor belt, I couldn’t help but stand on a box and loudly exclaim, ‘Let every tyrant tremble!’ The noise of the press drowned me out so that only a couple of pressmen gave me funny looks.’
“Back in Falls Church, young O’Brien had walked the streets crowing, ‘Have you heard the news? Come March 28, Falls Church is going to have its own newspaper!’”
Books
Chronicling disastrous effects of ‘conversion therapy’
New book uncovers horror, unexpected humor of discredited practice

‘Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy’
By Lucas F. W. Wilson
c.2025, Jessica Kingsley Publishers
$21.95/190 pages
You’re a few months in, and it hasn’t gotten any easier.
You made your New Year’s resolutions with forethought, purpose, and determination but after all this time, you still struggle, ugh. You’ve backslid. You’ve cheated because change is hard. It’s sometimes impossible. And in the new book, “Shame-Sex Attraction” by Lucas F. W. Wilson, it can be exceptionally traumatic.

Progress does not come without problems.
While it’s true that the LGBTQ community has been adversely affected by the current administration, there are still things to be happy about when it comes to civil rights and acceptance. Still, says Wilson, one “particularly slow-moving aspect… has been the fight against what is widely known as conversion therapy.”
Such practices, he says, “have numerous damaging, death-dealing, and no doubt disastrous consequences.” The stories he’s collected in this volume reflect that, but they also mirror confidence and strength in the face of detrimental treatment.
Writer Gregory Elsasser-Chavez was told to breathe in something repellent every time he thought about other men. He says, in the end, he decided not to “pray away the gay.” Instead, he quips, he’d “sniff it away.”
D. Apple became her “own conversation therapist” by exhausting herself with service to others as therapy. Peter Nunn’s father took him on a surprise trip, but the surprise was a conversion facility; Nunn’s father said if it didn’t work, he’d “get rid of” his 15-year-old son. Chaim Levin was forced to humiliate himself as part of his therapy.
Lexie Bean struggled to make a therapist understand that they didn’t want to be a man because they were “both.” Jordan Sullivan writes of the years it takes “to re-integrate and become whole” after conversion therapy. Chris Csabs writes that he “tried everything to find the root of my problem” but “nothing so far had worked.”
Says Syre Klenke of a group conversion session, “My heart shattered over and over as people tried to console and encourage each other…. I wonder if each of them is okay and still with us today.”
Here’s a bit of advice for reading “Shame-Sex Attraction”: dip into the first chapter, maybe the second, then go back and read the foreword and introduction, and resume.
The reason: author Lucas F. W. Wilson’s intro is deep and steep, full of footnotes and statistics, and if you’re not prepared or you didn’t come for the education, it might scare you away. No, the subtitle of this book is likely why you’d pick the book up so because that’s what you really wanted, indulge before backtracking.
You won’t be sorry; the first stories are bracing and they’ll steel you for the rest, for the emotion and the tears, the horror and the unexpected humor.
Be aware that there are triggers all over this book, especially if you’ve been subjected to anything like conversion therapy yourself. Remember, though, that the survivors are just that: survivors, and their strength is what makes this book worthwhile. Even so, though “Shame-Sex Attraction” is an essential read, that doesn’t make it any easier.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
Books
How one gay Catholic helped change the world
‘A Prince of a Boy,’ falls short of author’s previous work

Brian McNaught, the pioneering gay activist and author of 1986’s “On Being Gay” and 1993’s “Gay Issues in the Workplace,” has written a personal account about his Catholic faith and homosexuality. It is a memoir without much substance.
“A Prince of a Boy: How One Gay Catholic Helped Change the World” (Cascade Books) is a strong personal statement by McNaught. He helped change family relationships. He helped change attitudes about homosexuality. He helped change workplaces, but the world?

In January 2023, the Catholic News Service reported that Pope Francis announced that, “being homosexual is not a crime.” In December 2023, NPR reported that Pope Francis approved “Catholic blessings for same-sex couples, but not for marriage.” Francis died Monday at age 88. Although Catholics may not see homosexuality as a crime, they see sex outside of marriage as a sin. They see same-sex marriage as a sin.
In 2021, Gallup reported that membership in the Catholic Church had declined 20 percent since 2000. In 2025, the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study found that nearly 40 percent of Americans identified as Protestant, while the same study found that only 19 percent identified as Catholic.
McNaught devotes much of his book to his life as a gay Catholic. It is challenging to read about his personal struggle. Some readers may find it interesting. Others might find it boring. Catholic readers may find it more compelling than Protestant readers.
As the above statistics prove, McNaught has much more work to do to change the Catholic Church’s views about homosexuality. We should be glad for his contribution to the debate within the Catholic Church. We should pray for full acceptance of gays in the Catholic Church.
“A Prince of a Boy” becomes more interesting when McNaught describes his work as an educator on LGBTQ issues. He has had an impact on workplace policies, academic programs, and public education, and his lectures, books, and other materials are widely used.
Based on my experience in the federal government and volunteering with LGBTQ organizations from the Bay Area to Washington, D.C., I believe McNaught’s work as an educator has improved LGBTQ lives, careers, and families. During the Clinton administration, I gave many copies of “Gay Issues in the Workplace” to personnel directors. I felt their staff could benefit from reading it. I thought it would help the lives and careers of my federal LGBTQ colleagues.
McNaught’s “A Prince of a Boy” was released in December 2024. Anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant died the same month. Bryant campaigned against a gay rights law in Florida. She began a national campaign against gays.
When Bryant successfully reversed a gay rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida, McNaught wrote the important essay “Dear Anita, Late Night Thoughts of an Irish Catholic Homosexual.” The essay is not in “A Prince of a Boy”; however, McNaught mentions Bryant.
In his training programs, McNaught describes homosexuals as journeying from confusion to denial to acceptance to pride. “Anita Bryant and AIDS brought Gay people to identity pride very quickly,” McNaught writes. San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk (1930-1978) and other activists reached similar conclusions about Bryant’s vicious anti-gay campaign.
McNaught helped change the LGBTQ world and brought pride to many people’s lives. McNaught walks in pride, works in pride, and educates others in pride.
“A Prince of a Boy” is a disappointing book. It provides small details about Brian McNaught’s large, proud life. A meaningful biography about this great gay leader is long overdue.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
Books
‘Pronoun Trouble’ reminds us that punctuation matters
‘They’ has been a shape-shifter for more than 700 years

‘Pronoun Trouble’
By John McWhorter
c.2025, Avery
$28/240 pages
Punctuation matters.
It’s tempting to skip a period at the end of a sentence Tempting to overuse exclamation points!!! very tempting to MeSs with capital letters. Dont use apostrophes. Ask a question and ignore the proper punctuation commas or question marks because seriously who cares. So guess what? Someone does, punctuation really matters, and as you’ll see in “Pronoun Trouble” by John McWhorter, so do other parts of our language.

Conversation is an odd thing. It’s spontaneous, it ebbs and flows, and it’s often inferred. Take, for instance, if you talk about him. Chances are, everyone in the conversation knows who him is. Or he. That guy there.
That’s the handy part about pronouns. Says McWhorter, pronouns “function as shorthand” for whomever we’re discussing or referring to. They’re “part of our hardwiring,” they’re found in all languages, and they’ve been around for centuries.
And, yes, pronouns are fluid.
For example, there’s the first-person pronoun, I as in me and there we go again. The singular I solely affects what comes afterward. You say “he-she IS,” and “they-you ARE” but I am. From “Black English,” I has also morphed into the perfectly acceptable Ima, shorthand for “I am going to.” Mind blown.
If you love Shakespeare, you may’ve noticed that he uses both thou and you in his plays. The former was once left to commoners and lower classes, while the latter was for people of high status or less formal situations. From you, we get y’all, yeet, ya, you-uns, and yinz. We also get “you guys,” which may have nothing to do with guys.
We and us are warmer in tone because of the inclusion implied. She is often casually used to imply cars, boats, and – warmly or not – gay men, in certain settings. It “lacks personhood,” and to use it in reference to a human is “barbarity.”
And yes, though it can sometimes be confusing to modern speakers, the singular word “they” has been a “shape-shifter” for more than 700 years.
Your high school English teacher would be proud of you, if you pick up “Pronoun Trouble.” Sadly, though, you might need her again to make sense of big parts of this book: What you’ll find here is a delightful romp through language, but it’s also very erudite.
Author John McWhorter invites readers along to conjugate verbs, and doing so will take you back to ancient literature, on a fascinating journey that’s perfect for word nerds and anyone who loves language. You’ll likely find a bit of controversy here or there on various entries, but you’ll also find humor and pop culture, an explanation for why zie never took off, and assurance that the whole flap over strictly-gendered pronouns is nothing but overblown protestation. Readers who have opinions will like that.
Still, if you just want the pronoun you want, a little between-the-lines looking is necessary here, so beware. “Pronoun Trouble” is perfect for linguists, writers, and those who love to play with words but for most readers, it’s a different kind of book, period.
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
-
Books4 days ago
Chronicling disastrous effects of ‘conversion therapy’
-
U.S. Federal Courts3 days ago
Second federal lawsuit filed against White House passport policy
-
Opinions4 days ago
We must show up to WorldPride 2025 in D.C.
-
District of Columbia3 days ago
Ruby Corado sentencing postponed for third time