Odd Man In

In 1951, Donald Webster Cory published The Homosexual in America, one of the first nonfiction accounts of gay life in the United States. The work was a surprise bestseller during a time of widespread censorship and anti-gay hysteria. Its mysterious author—a self-proclaimed homosexual—argued that gay people are neither sick nor sinful, but an oppressed minority that must fight for equal rights. His book helped ignite the early gay rights movement, inspiring a generation with its radical message of self-acceptance. Adoring readers and activists called Cory the father of their movement.

But in the mid-1960s, under the influence of a controversial psychoanalyst, he began to assert that homosexuality could be cured. The movement repudiated Cory, relegating him to a historical footnote.

“Donald Webster Cory” was the pseudonym of Edward Sagarin, a closeted sociology professor with a wife and son. Aware of the consequences of coming out, Sagarin chose a “secure” straight life over the truth of a gay one. Though he courageously imagined a liberated queer future, he would never reach it himself.

Odd Man In reconstructs Edward’s life through the eyes of his only son, Fred. As he explores his father’s archive, Fred tries to make sense of Edward’s transformation and asks what today’s LGBTQ+ movement owes him.