eal Minahan ’94 had it all going for
him as a young man at Xaverian. He
came from a loving and supportive family,
was a three-sport captain (football, swim, and
track), had many friends, was a student leader,
and did well in school. In his senior year,
Neal committed to play football at Columbia
University. By all appearances, he had it made.
But that wasn’t the whole story.
“It’s almost like I have two sets of memories
from high school,” he says. “I have the fun ones,
the football team, winning games, learning,
XLI, and building relationships with people
who still are my best friends to this day. The
other set of memories are harder, because the
backdrop was that I was struggling to figure out
who I was, and how to deal with who I was in
this world.”
Neal Minahan ’94, a
nationally recognized
attorney and community
leader in Boston, presented
to Without Xception in
October 2022. He’s pictured
here with his classmate and
Head of School, Dr. Jacob
Conca ’94. The two were co-
captains of the 1993 Hawks
football team and remain
friends to this day.
would hurt themself…a younger person who
didn’t have everything going for them in the
same way. If it was this hard for me, what
would it be like for them?”
So he approached the administration with
the idea to host an all-school presentation on
homophobia. They said yes. It was the first of
what became a decades-long program called
“Awareness Days,” during which speakers
address the Xaverian community on a variety
of topics. Though the name has changed, these
series continue to this day.
Neal was honest and generous in his
Without Xception presentation. He talked
about his life, the struggles of not feeling
known, of weathering anti-gay jokes, of
coming out, and eventually, of getting
married with his Xaverian friends by his side.
The thread running through all he had to
share was love.
“I will do the obligatory ‘quote a musical’”
he said with humor. “It’s from Les Miserables
— ‘to love another person is to see the face of
God.’ I wish nothing for all of you but to find
someone you love and who loves you, so you
can create a life and be happy together.” And
then he left the students with some advice:
“If you’re straight, be careful with your
words. Watch what you do and say. Be the
defender. Be the person who stands up. Be
the person who speaks up, because it’s hard
when you’re the person going through this to
speak up for yourself. If you’re gay, know that
there are people who love you. I love you.
God made you and God loves you, and you
have to love yourself, too.”
Acceptance Without
Xception
Neal Minahan ’94
God made you and
God loves you, and
you have to love
yourself, too.
attended the optional presentation. He said
that he knew there was something different
about him when he was as young as 12, but
that it wasn’t until sitting in his freshman
biology class that it suddenly became clear
to him that he was gay. It was a difficult time,
he said. “I didn’t know what to do with that. I
knew I wasn’t going to tell anyone for a while.
And I knew that I had to reconcile myself
with God on this very quickly,” he said. His
thoughts on God at the time were twofold.
They went like this: “God hates gay people.”
And, “God made you. God loves you. God is
accepting.”
He felt that both couldn’t be true, so he
decided to ignore the first one and focus on
the rest. Neal poured himself into sports and
thrived as an athlete, with no one aware of his
internal struggle. In the summer of 1993, he
attended XLI (Xaverian Leadership Institute),
an optional multi-day retreat for rising
seniors run by the campus ministry program.
It was then that Neal first told another person
he is gay, and he picked the safest outlet
he could think of—he went to Confession.
But what Neal went to say, he felt, wasn’t
a confession; it was a revelation. “I am not
confessing anything,” he told the priest. And
with that, he declared, “I’m gay.” The priest,
he said, was “lovely and supportive,” and that
was the first purposeful step for Neal on the
road to self-awareness and acceptance.
“I returned from XLI with this feeling of
responsibility as a senior, a leader. My biggest
fear was that I was too scared to come out
and maybe, because of that, someone else
Throughout high school, Neal felt
anxious, angry, confused, and depressed;
he felt he wasn’t being true to himself. Neal
Minahan is gay, and as a young man in the
early 1990s at an all-boys Catholic school, it
seemed there was nowhere for him to turn
for support. More than 25 years later, this fall
Neal returned to campus to speak at an event
hosted by a club founded to address just
that; it’s called Without Xception. In 2018,
Without Xception launched to acknowledge
and offer pastoral support to students
who are in various stages of awareness,
acceptance, and openness about their sexual
orientation, with the fundamental belief that
everyone is created in the image and likeness
of a loving God, and that God loves all people
“without exception” (CCC 478).
On October 18, Neal shared his story of
self-discovery to a crowded room of students,
faculty, staff, and administrators who
8 www.xbhs.com