JOHN ROTTET - jrottet@newsobserver.com
Steven Petrow addresses the audience during an appearance at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill.
Chapel Hill author Steve Petrow wants people to treat others as they would like to be treated.
Yet when it comes to applying that golden rule to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, Petrow has experienced hostility and name-calling instead of acceptance.
That's one reason he wrote "Steven Petrow's Complete Gay & Lesbian Manners," released this month. The thick (448 pages) volume is a resource for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, navigating such issues as coming out, dating, sex etiquette, wedding and commitment ceremonies, and parenting and work etiquette, in a world where inequality still exists.
"I'm on a mission," says the 53-year-old Petrow. "I want to educate one person, one family, and one company at a time."
Challenging the status quo isn't easy, Petrow said during an interview at Guglhupf cafe in Durham. As he sips iced coffee, he talks about some of his in-your-face interviews. Like the time during a radio program in Pensacola, Fla., when the deejay started the conversation by introducing Petrow and then saying he thought gay people were disgusting. He liked the money they spent in the area during vacations, though.
Or during another interview, when a Tennessee radio listener called in and said, "I can tell he's gay by the way he talks."
Petrow quipped back, "I can tell he's from Tennessee."
In the book, Petrow addresses issues from "womb to tomb," such as deciding whether you want to be "out" at work and how to refer to your partner, what to call the children of LGBT families and how to write holiday letters.
But he notes that the book is also a guide for straight people living at a time when traditions and cultures are changing, when sometimes people don't fit neatly into one category. This is a time when singer Cher's daughter Chastity Bono is now a man named Chaz. And New York state just became the largest state in the country to make same-sex marriage legal.
That's why each chapter features "Straight Talk," a question from the straight community in a quandary about some issue involving the LGBT community.
On the outside, Petrow exudes cool. Still, facing the f-word and being called flamboyant and promiscuous can make it tough to stay calm. "I fundamentally believe that treating everyone with respect is crucial," he says. "But sometimes people are trying to provoke a response that will take us both down."
His mission, he writes in the book, is: "Helping people live with greater confidence and self-esteem by learning to lean on simple principles of human kindness."
'Queeries' to answer
Petrow gathered a lot of the material for his book from questions - which he likes to call "queeries" - from the column of the same name he wrote for the Independent Weekly for two years. The Indy column, designed for a crossover audience, ended in 2010. "Queeries" is now a nationally syndicated column distributed by Q Syndicate to the top LGBT newspapers.
The guide is Petrow's seventh book, an update of a 1995 work "The Essential Book of Gay Manners and Etiquette." Why the update? "We're all in flux," he says.
Petrow sees his book as a guide to contemporary living with plain old straight talk. We all need that.
