House and Home: The political and personal journey of a gay Republican congressman and the man with whom he created a family - Hardcover

Steve Gunderson is a Republican congressman from Wisconsin. Rob Morris is his lover. Such is the backdrop of a biography that bends stereotypes and confronts the popular notions both of what it means to be gay and of the definition of family. The book focuses mostly on Gunderson's journey--though it includes essential views from Morris--from his religious, Midwestern background, to his journey to Washington and the experience of being an openly gay politician in a time of almost religious warfare over sexual preference. While Gunderson and Morris examine the many forces at work in the formation of values, they ask both those in the zealous Right and in the confrontational Left to take notice.

When Gunderson, the only openly gay Republican congressman, launched his 1994 reelection campaign, he told his western Wisconsin district it would be his last. His decision affords him the luxury of producing not a campaign tract but a real memoir, especially concerned with his life with architect (and coauthor) Rob Morris. He met Morris in Washington in 1983, and Morris brought the socially reticent Gunderson many gay friends; through his interactions with them, Gunderson achieved greater self-acceptance and, eventually, involvement with gay issues, particularly those swirling around AIDS. Gunderson could not, however, both crusade for gay causes and serve his dairy-farming constituency as faithfully as he felt he must. For his commitment to being a "governing Republican" (his term) rather than a party ideologue, he endured defamation from radical gays and, eventually, from the religious right. Gunderson's modesty and dedication to public service illuminate his account but threaten to make it bland. Fortunately, Morris is a spicier guy, and critic and poet Bruce Bawer's help with the writing keeps the book lively and absorbing. Ray Olson