Equal: A Memoir of Gay Rights

I finished Equal and realized I was still sitting there, not quite ready to move on to anything else. When the book arrived, I honestly thought I'd glance at it and come back later. That did not happen. I kept reading. I stayed up with it. I felt pulled through it.

What struck me right away was how exposed it is. Not in a dramatic or performative way, just quietly, relentlessly honest. It felt less like a memoir and more like being handed pieces of someone's life and trusted to sit with them. The letters, the documents, the way moments are allowed to remain unresolved. It felt like reading a personal archive rather than a story trying to explain itself.

There was an instance that made me actually gasp out loud. The scene at Lee's house, when his parents came by unexpectedly at a time Lee was not yet out of the closet to them. Dan tried to hide, hoping not to be seen, and then having to explain who he was anyway. That sudden exposure, the way everything collapses into that one awful, unavoidable moment. I had to stop reading for a minute after that. It was so familiar, so quietly terrifying, and so perfectly captured.

And then there are lines that just stay with you. "Grindr's grassroots democracy" made me laugh and then immediately think, yes, that is exactly it. The summary is funny, sharp, and completely serious at the same time. That sentence alone does more analytical work than many pages I have read elsewhere.

The book did not come across like just a memoir to me. It felt like lived history. Like something that needed to be written down before it slipped away or got softened. I am really grateful this version of Dan's life was put on the page. I am genuinely glad to have read it.

Today, in the United States, LGBTQ+ people appear in the media, and they hold prominent positions in politics, and in the public and private sectors of the economy. In his deeply candid and reflective Equal: A Memoir of Gay Rights, Dan Pinello reminds us that this visibility is a very recent – and fragile – development. As we move with Dan through college, law and graduate school, various career paths, and life events such as dating, marriage, and divorce, we see how many of these significant-but-common milestones are layered with additional challenges and complexities for those who must hide and deny their sexual orientation. And even with gay marriage and myriad other rights attainments, Dan makes clear the ongoing effects of LGBTQ+ discrimination, especially for men his age – a generation ravaged by HIV/AIDS. Yet for all of the sadness and heartbreak, Equal: A Memoir of Gay Rights is also a brilliant story of hope and change. Dan's fearless activism for LBGTQ+ rights and recognition in every space, from the marriage bureau to the workplace, offers a much needed reminder in our contemporary political climate: that change is possible when we are brave and willing to work with others to develop a better, more equitable society for everyone.