Virtually normal

First lines

There are as many politics of homosexuality as there are words for it, and not all of them contain reason.

About this book

No issue seems to divide Western society more passionately and more deeply than homosexuality. Is homosexuality immoral? Should homosexuals be allowed to serve in the military? Should they be allowed to marry? Are gay rights special rights or civil rights? These and many other questions have roiled our politics for the last decade - and the debate is getting no calmer. In this pathbreaking book, Andrew Sullivan, the brilliant young editor of The New Republic, takes on all these questions. Whatever your view about homosexuality, he tries to talk you out of it. Sullivan reframes the debate into four competing political positions: prohibitionist, liberationist, conservative, and liberal. He takes them on one by one, first sympathetically detailing their strengths, then relentlessly exposing their weaknesses. At the crux of his argument is a manifesto for a new politics that can transform the way we approach the homosexual question, and many other social issues as well. Challenging to homosexuals and heterosexuals alike, its proposals are likely to stir controversy on all sides.

Themes & subjects

About the author