Glen McLean and Keith Chamberlain have lived together for four years. Their love for each other is solid, or so it seems until Katie Collins returns to their small town outside of Dallas. Her marriage is ending and she is pregnant possibly by Glen through a procedure at a fertility clinic, she says. Keith doesn't buy it. He believes that her pregnancy is the result of a sexual encounter with Glen, and he is consumed with jealousy and the fear that Katie has returned to take Glen from him. Gentry Phillips, the handsome 18-year-old son of a Southern Baptist minister, is in love with his best friend. He is wracked by fear that he is gay-an abomination that will bring God's judgment. He turns to Glen, a respected teacher, for guidance, and by so doing makes Glen a target for his father's wrath. Katie's aunt is an ardent supporter of Gentry's father, Reverend Phillips, in his unrelenting condemnation of homosexuals. She is outraged that Katie is naming Glen as her baby's father. "You'd have to be dumb as dirt to put a pervert on your baby's birth certificate. What if something happened to you and that homosexual tried to lay claim to your baby"