I might very well have stayed aloof from the growing protests were it not for Rey, a senior at Columbia. Rey had been a debater at Brooklyn Prep and knew of me through my involvement in forensics. Early in the fall he presented himself as a “big brother.” We got together many times, mostly for conversation in the café in the basement of John Jay. Rey was a willing listener to the debates that were raging inside me and that spilled out in my letters to Vinny and others. But unlike my Regis friends, who were either in seminary or in Catholic colleges, Rey had been outside of a Catholic world for three years. He had worked through the challenges that Columbia threw at good Catholic boys. He commented from the perspective of someone who had experienced something similar. Religion, the challenges of the curriculum, the campus turmoil about the war: all were fodder for our talks. Rey offered relief from the storms swirling inside me. He gave me space for reflecting that felt safe and, at least momentarily, calming. 

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John D'Emilio: Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood: Coming of Age in the '60's