IMPRISONED BY HIS OWN PASSIONS: Marshall Herff Applewhite

PENALIZED FOR HIS SEXUALITY, THE FUTURE GURU EMBARKED ON A QUEST FOR SEXLESS DEVOTION AND AN ANTISEPTIC HEAVEN

Through the 1960s, Marshall Herff Applewhite, the man who would end his life with the musical name Do, had been relegated to secondary roles at the Houston Grand Opera. The son of a peripatetic Texas preacher, he had given up earlier plans for the ministry to pursue a career in music, supporting himself, his wife and two children with jobs that ranged from rehearsal conductor to part-time English teacher to occupational therapist at a tuberculosis sanatorium. But he was pushing 40, and his struggle against his homosexuality was unraveling both his marriage and his academic post in a religious school. An...

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