Robert McLane’s trip to a very natural thing

In an article he contributed to The Gay & Lesbian Review, Nick Radel, a professor of English at Furman University, describes a connection between the university where he’s taught for over 30 years and the sexual revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s. He discovered it in the 1974 film “A Very Natural Thing,” which was released in 1974 and whose cast included 1965 Furman alumnus Robert Joel McLane, an English major. Radel, who contrasts Furman’s identity as being a “million intellectual miles” from its former Baptist affiliation, says the movie “was one of the first feature-length, mainstream films that attempted to normalize gay people and their relationships.”

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