Sodom on Itself
What Do Gay Men Want? An Essay on Sex, Risk, and Subjectivity
by David M. Halperin
University of Michigan Press, 2007
(167 pages, $22.95, hardcover)
reviewed by David L. Tubbs
Writing in 1979, William F. Buckley, Jr., observed that the nascent gay-rights movement lacked readily identifiable national leaders. He also noted that beyond pleas for undefined “equal rights”—no one at the time suggested “gay marriage”—the goals of its activists were obscure. This distinguished it from the civil rights movement, and it helped to explain why many Americans viewed the new movement with suspicion.
Almost thirty years later, the movement has won high-profile cases in both state and federal courts, yet Buckley’s point remains valid. What are the movement’s long-term goals? Would redefining marriage to include same-sex couples signify its end? Or would there be more demands? The continued absence of recognizable national leaders makes it hard to know.
David M. Halperin is a professor of humanities at the University of Michigan, and though his new book has little to say about the struggle over the redefinition of marriage, it helps to answer questions like these. An example of the new category of academic writing known as “queer theory,” his book shows that leading “queer theorists” do not understand marriage and romantic relationships the way the overwhelming majority of Americans do.
For this reason, traditional Christians—and anyone else working to save marriage—need to pay attention to what people like Halperin are saying.
Undomesticated Men
The book is an extended essay, and among its purposes is a defense of male homosexuals from the charge of dangerous, and potentially suicidal, conduct during the AIDS epidemic. Halperin is candid about the promiscuity of many gay men, even those in “committed” relationships, and he would seemingly (his arguments are sometimes maddeningly qualified) resist any attempt to “domesticate” them.
He argues that the key variable is whether the sexual partners have the same “serostatus.” Thus, two men who are HIV-positive (or HIV-negative) should not automatically be criticized for having sex without condoms, even if they are strangers to each other.
He also argues that heterosexual men and women deserve equal criticism for risky sexual behavior, pointing out that “gay sex” accounted for only one-third of the new cases of AIDS reported in the United States in 2005. (He knows that American homosexuals do not constitute anything like one-third of the population, so the problem with this argument will be evident to many readers.)
Acknowledging the realities of the “gay” life, Halperin admits that some men may not know if they are HIV-positive. A homosexual man who is
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