Rev. Dr. Don McGaw

Don McGaw moved to Boston in 1964 to attend Boston University School of Theology. While at  seminary he began his activism by choosing to focus on religious and homosexuality. He found good support from the faculty and most of the students there at the time. Although he was ordained in the United Methodist Church, McGaw chose to go into clinical work because he believed that was where he was called. He specialized in working with the GLBT community because of repeated horror stories from persons going to straight therapists with guilt-ridden results. 

In 1968, while serving as an associate pastor, he started counseling--life coaching, actually--within the GLBT community. That led to invitations to speak to the various Student Homophile Leagues at the universities in Greater Boston. He was put in touch with Richard Pillard, a young psychiatrist who was on the same lecture circuit. McGaw met Pillard and discovered they had similar goals--to provide a GLBT clinic for their community that offers empathic counseling/therapy. A year later, they founded the Homophile Community Health Service (HCHS). HCHS became the first state-licensed mental health clinic focusing on GLBT issues. Within a short time, HCHS was accredited for field work placement for psychiatric interns, psychology interns, social workers, and pastoral counselor interns. McGaw became a teaching fellow in the Boston Theological Institute. Many of Boston’s finest therapists can look back and say they received their training at HCHS. 

McGaw was also a pioneer in Affirmation, the United Methodist gay caucus. He was appointed to the National Family Life Committee in Nashville by Bishop Edward Carroll.  McGaw's  responsibility was to offer guidance in formulating ministries to the families of GLBT persons and to educate the United Methodist Board of Discipleship about GLBT issues. To this end McGaw helped organize a national consultation on homosexuality with the Board at Rolling Ridge. It was quite an event–one that McGaw recalls "I will not forget."

After leaving HCHS, McGaw started his own clinical practice as Mass Bay Counseling Associates and has been involved there since 1976. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Human Identity (New York City), as well as Integrity (Boston), an interfaith GLBT religious education organization.  He also served as a staff writer on physchology and religion for a United Methodist magazine, as well as a news magazine that started in the 1980's in Boston.

(This biographical statement provided by Don McGaw.)

Biography Date: September, 2004

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