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The Gay Preacher’s Wife
I recently met Lydia Meredith at a local book club dinner. She is the author of The gay Preacher’s Wife: How My Gay Husband Deconstructed My Life and Reconstructed My Faith . The ladies in the book club did not know what to make of the book and sought to get the perspective of a heterosexual man, so they invited me.
I’m glad they did. As I began to read the book for the book club discussion, I quickly learned the author had grown up in my hometown and her 92 year-old mother was best friends with my 89 year-old mother. One of her nine sisters and the sister’s husband were college classmates of mine.
Suddenly, the provocative subject matter of this book became personal. The Gay Preacher’s Wife was not just some misfortunate woman who ended up in a bad relationship, she was someone who grew up in Middle Georgia with the same religious values I had. She undoubtedly had heard the same sermons I had heard. For instance, “God did not make Adam and Steve, he made Adam and Eve.”
How had this happened?
“Dennis (his real name) was the best sexual partner in the world. In my world!He knew my body. He knew exactly what to do.I had an orgasm every single time…I looked forward to making love to my husband, and we did so quite frequently,” Meredith writes early in her narrative.