Charles Silverstein via Facebook

Charles Silverstein, 87, died on Jan. 30. He was a writer, therapist and gay rights activist. He was best known for a presentation he gave at the American Psychiatric Association meeting in 1973 that led to the removal of homosexuality as a mental illness.

His passing reminded me of an afternoon in 1975, maybe early 1976, when I met him.

We met when I attended a POG meeting at a church in Greenwich Village with my college boyfriend, Jon. POG stood for Parents of Gays, which later became Parents of Lesbians and Gays, which later became Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays with branches around the world. In 1975, POG consisted of 10 sets of parents.

Silverstein was researching a book he was writing and attended the meeting. The book came out in 1977 and was called A Family Matter: A Parents’ Guide to Homosexuality.

In it, he takes two pages to describe the POG meeting we attended and talks about how one gay couple arrives at the meeting after the parents of one of young men. He describes how I shook hands with Jon’s father — it was one of the first times I had met him — and how we seemed to have a friendly chat before the meeting began. His point was that we seemed to be a normal couple that had a normal relationship with his parents.

When the book came out, Jon and I were extremely disappointed. Silverstein had changed our names to protect us. We didn’t feel like we really needed much protection. After all, his parents were among the founders of PFLAG. And my family never taught me there was anything I needed to be protected from.

One memory I have of that day was going out for Chinese food with Jon and his parents after the meeting. I’ll never forget the fortune in his mother’s fortune cookie. She carried it around with her for the rest of her life. It read, “You will meet someone as gay as you are.”

— David Taffet