Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star
a memoir
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Pub Date 6 Oct 2026 | Archive Date 28 Dec 2026
MilSpace Books an imprint of W. Brand Publishing | Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Titles
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Description
Here’s the true story of Rich Merritt—the good son, the teacher’s pet, the model Christian student who spent the first two decades of his life inside a fundamentalist cult that taught him gay people were worthy of death. The Marine captain who served with distinction under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell while secretly shooting gay porn films—a dangerous rebellion against the institutions that had tried to own him.
When an acclaimed novelist named Jennifer Egan profiled him anonymously on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, the walls between his worlds came crashing down. The gay press outed the porn. The military came asking questions. And the man who’d spent his entire life performing different versions of himself for different audiences suddenly had nowhere left to hide.
What followed was a spectacular unraveling—addiction, a shattered career, a fight for survival that brought him to the edge and nearly pushed him over. By turns harrowing and heartbreaking, angry and darkly funny, Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star is the story of a man who refused to let anyone — gay or straight, fundamentalist or liberal—define who he was allowed to be.
This second edition includes shocking new revelations that The New York Times does not want you to know—and the confession Merritt wasn’t ready to make the first time around.
A Note From the Publisher
eBook: 9798895030509
Audiobook: 979-8-89503-063-9
Additional Book Formats with (ISBN-13):
eBook: 9798895030509
Audiobook: 979-8-89503-063-9
Advance Praise
"An unflinching look at life in the Marines . . . an absolute must-read."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Readers don’t just discover a memoirist, the memoirist discovers himself. And any life worth examining is worth a second look. Rich Merritt is honest, hilarious, and even less interested in behaving this time around.”
–Greg Cope White, author of The Pink Marine, and writer on the Netflix show Boots
"Rich Merritt writes with a rueful, self-aware candor that grows sharper in this revised edition, where time has given him the distance to be kinder to the people he hurt and harder on himself. The themes of institutional hypocrisy, the cost of living in hiding, and what we owe the people we choose to protect ourselves from by abandoning them give Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star a moral weight. This is a remarkable, necessary memoir that earns every complicated feeling it leaves behind."
–Mansoor Ahmed for Readers’ Favorite
"Rich Merritt’s Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star (Second Edition) is a memoir that describes the author’s extraordinary life, from the suffocating fundamentalist Christian beliefs that stigmatized gays in the rural South and at Bob Jones University to the discipline of the Marine Corps. This memoir skillfully exposes the struggles of being gay, especially in the age before the internet."
–Romuald Dzemo for Readers’ Favorite
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9798895030493 |
| PRICE | $23.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 390 |