First Openly Gay Firefighter Writes About his Life a ‘Trial by Fire’
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In Alarm in the Firehouse: A Memoir of America’s First Openly Gay Professional Firefighter, R. Kevin Mallinson reveals that when he was 25 and joined the Key West Fire Department in 1981 the first thing a coworker said was, “We heard you’re a goddamned faggot!”
Raelizing he was gay at an early age, Mallinson decided to live as openly and honestly as he could. “I had always heard that ‘the truth will set you free,’” he writes. “Well, it seems that it might slap you across the face first. Then, it will set you free!”
Mallinson took a lot of slaps in pursuing his dream of becoming a firefighter. Being snubbed and bullied was bad enough, but there were times when his co-workers actually endangered his life, abandoning him in burning buildings and aiming powerful hoses at him to try and knock him off his ladder. How, he wondered, could “adult men devolve into acting like hostile adolescents? [And] why was I such a threat to these guys?”
R. Kevin Mallinson is a retired university professor, public speaker, and researcher who advocates for disenfranchised groups, particularly LGBTQ+ communities and people with, or at risk for, HIV disease. He and his husband split their time between Lewes, Delaware, and Capitol Hill.
