Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality

Virtually Normal is an exploration of today's principal arguments about homosexuality, from the Catholic church to Michel Foucault. It is a book not about individual feelings but about the way society deals - or does not deal - with the homosexual minority. And, finally, it charts a new politics to lead us out of our cultural and political impasse - based not on the behaviour of the private citizen but on the activity of the state - and argues for full equality for homosexuals, especially in marriage and in the military. Virtually Normal is a political and moral treatise in the grand tradition. Impassioned, reasoned, subtle and uncompromising, it will set the terms of the debate on homosexuality for years to come; and will enable the bitter and unfocused arguments relating to outing, established religion and anti-gay prejudice to have an intellectual - and ultimately pragmatic - framework.

In a dizzyingly short period of time, homosexuality has gone from being the love that dare not speak its name to the one that shouts it. Refreshingly, in this wide-ranging discussion of the moral and political status of homosexuals, Sullivan, the gay former whizbang New Republic editor, prefers the middle register. On the one hand, he shuns the liberal tendency to give gays victim status but, on the other, advocates the legalization of gay marriage because he views it as the public recognition of a gay's basic human right to fully love another member of his/her group -- a right that, Sullivan notes, even bigots generally grant those they hate.