Ferocious Romance: What My Encounters With The Right Taught Me About Sex, God, And Fury

In Ferocious Romance, Donna Minkowitz meets her worst enemies -- and discovers herself in the process.

On assignment for The Village Voice, Minkowitz reported on the religious groups of the far right. She went to a Christian Coalition convention disguised as a delegate, infiltrated the Promise Keepers (disguised as a man) for an award-winning article in Ms., and spent a week with a pastor who protests at the funerals of gay men who died of AIDS. But as this radical lesbian feminist went undercover and got to know her "subjects", she was startled to learn how much she had in common with the activists she feared and opposed.

As Minkowitz discovered parallels between the extremes of religious fundamentalism on the right and sexual liberation groups on the left, she began to explore the connections between love and hate, between victim and victimizer. The result is a personal story of one woman's battle with her inner demons -- and a startling overview of our contemporary wars of sex, religion, and gender.

When Donna Minkowitz, a contributing writer to the Village Voice, Ms., and Out (among others), got in drag as a 16-year-old boy (complete with baseball cap and fake mustache), she soon found herself surrounded by taut-bodied, sweaty men in tight-fitting T-shirts and well-worn Levi's embracing and holding hands. But she wasn't sneaking into a gay bar: this was a Promise Keepers convention, where "family men" were enslaving themselves before their master, Jesus, as they learned to ask forgiveness for their sins and demanded the return of their traditional patriarchal role from their families.

In her brave new book, Ferocious Romance, Minkowitz investigates the Religious Right, and in so doing draws some unexpected parallels between that culture and the diametrically opposed worlds of the S/M community, ACT-UP, Queer Nation, and Sex Panic!; she also finds herself identifying with many of the people she meets. This is a poignant journey in which Minkowitz comes face-to-face with the very people she has protested against as an activist; the experience leads her to explore her relationships to organized religion, women, feminism, sex, friendship, romance, and rage. A thoughtful and unconventional memoir--at turns harrowing and enlightening--that hits straight at the reader's heart and mind. --Kera Bolonik