From 1979-81 Graham ran a college radio show
reviewing nonfiction books and poetry. His poetry show motivated a
self-described Christian to scrawl “Fuck You!” on his dorm door the night he
read Adrienne Lynne. During that stint he received a letter from futurist Ed
Lindaman, college president and former computer director of the Apollo space
program, thanking him for covering “No Limits To Learning,” a look at innovation
by the eminent Club of Rome.
Graham can write for mainstream conservative readers: “Hanging Ten On BART”
appeared in 1981 in California Living Magazine, a Sunday supplement of the San
Francisco Chronicle. He did a travel piece for Navy Times magazine, his
experience buying a CD player that came with a Euro plug (great now, as he lives
in Germany). Many letters have seen editorial pages of The Contra Costa Times, a
conservative newspaper across the bay from San Francisco.
Long a drama student and playwright, his one-act “No Pedestrians Beyond This
Point” got produced at Walnut Creek Onstage, 1982. In it he played a young man
hitchhiking for the first time to San Diego to be with a boy friend who meets a
gypsy. Graham played guitar, Gypsy played harmonica, and the show became a song
and dance.
In 1983, Graham sent an article he wrote in two hours, the controversial
“Seduction Of Young Males,” to a San Francisco counter-culture magazine. The
editor said Graham had “stirred up more people than you could hope to imagine.”
He noted Hollywood’s fascination with boys younger and younger coming of age and
compared it to a Denmark film, “You Are Not Alone” (pre-teen boys filmed
themselves dealing with homosexuality).
In 1983 Graham attempted a Hollywood career. It got cut short Saturday night 23
February ‘84, when he had sex with a street gangster who then attacked him with
a meat cleaver, butcher knife, and baseball bat. Graham killed the boy, called
911 and spent a year with a public defender who got him acquitted of
first-degree murder, even when according to “his own statement” Graham was
guilty.
A well-trained disk jockey, in 1987 Graham ran the
morning show on FM station KCRK in Walnut Creek, “Bob Graham Live” from six to
nine a.m., until he separated from a billionairess girlfriend, and needed an
emotional escape from “those milkshake cafés down on Main Street.”
Graham joined the Navy at 31 in 1988. Although he had been acquitted his 1984
Hollywood murder trial delayed his entry and its homosexual circumstances
destroyed his Intelligence Specialist guarantee, and precluded the chance as
well of becoming either a Navy Photographer or Journalist, because he was no
longer eligible for any level security clearance. He became a Personnelman and
served in the real Top Gun through the Gulf War, returning home as a national
hero. On 15 November 1991, he wrote to Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney “on
behalf of my fellow Americans as a gay man in the military” complaining of the
relentless sexual harassment he had received from his chief. He was forced out
of the Navy within five working days -- tossing his uniforms in a Venice Beach
dumpster 33 days later. Graham is now married, with two sons (Noah is 9 and
Elvis is 5).
In 1992 the debate over gays in the military raged between Clinton and the
Pentagon. Clinton had promised to “lift the ban” but by December a clear policy
had not yet gelled. Graham wrote a letter to the L.A. Times citing specific
lines to delete in manuals and contracts he had become aware of as a Navy
Personnelman. Graham stated, “Ask me no questions I’ll tell no lies.”
Just four weeks after that letter appeared (December 21), the President directed
the Pentagon to delete items referring to sexual orientation in the basic
enlistment contract and announced the new name for his policy on gays in the
military: “Don’t Ask and Don’t Tell.”
Everyone has an agenda. Perhaps the most personal as we pass to the next
millennium, is our belief about the supernatural. Graham claims he witnessed the
Second Coming in 1977, and his biography is a vehicle for this revelation. Earth
has 1.5 billion Christians (32.4% of the population). A Holy Bible is the most
purchased, yet least studied book. Military Secret will challenge Christians to
pick up the Bible again and re-examine the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.