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Queer Wars: The New Gay Right and Its Critics
by Paul Robinson
University of Chicago Press. 192 pages, $25.
PAUL ROBINSON states at the beginning of Queer Wars that "the emergence of gay conservatism as a political and intellectual force is arguably the most important new development in the gay world." It's an ambitious claim, and one that would be hard to sustain with reference to today's political organizations. Indeed it's seriously debatable whether gay conservatism constitutes a political force at all. The largest gay conservative group, the Log Cabin Republicans, could scarcely be described as a political force in its own party.
Robinson is more interested in gay conservatism as an intellectual force. Queer Wars is a languid rumination on the careers and writings of Bruce Bawer, Andrew Sullivan, Gabriel Rotello, and Michelangelo Signorile. He freely acknowledges that they're a motley crew, not easy to fit into the procrustean category of "conservatism" -- a label, as he points out, that both Rotello and Signorile disavow. Women don't show up on Robinson's radar: he brushes aside journalist "Nora [sic] Vincent" and excludes Camille Paglia because "her thinking is too idiosyncratic and her politics too leftist"...