Attack Queers: Liberal Society and the Gay Right Hardback - 2002

“Hooray for Richard Goldstein! The Attack Queers is a brilliant ... and brilliantly written ... polemic against the rising tide of heartless gay conservatism and its ‘liberal’ straight allies. The Attack Queers is a much-needed call to arms for progressives of all stripes to rally before it’s too late.”—Martin Duberman, author of Stonewall

“Besides its sheer cogency, the most notable thing about The Attack Queers is, surprisingly, the generous patience with which it anatomizes the gay right. Far beyond the hackneyed invocation of ‘internalized homophobia,’ Goldstein embarks on an incisive navigation of the historical, racial, and psychological dynamics between queers and mainstream American political discourse.”—Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, author of Epistemology of the Closet

“Richard Goldstein’s The Attack Queers is a lucid, finely written, generously balanced polemic that retrieves the gay movement’s long, variegated history and its alliances with other oppressed minorities. Goldstein persuasively argues that the suppression of this history in public discussions of ‘gay issues’ has empowered gay versions of Clarence Thomas, pontificating from the bully pulpits of talk shows and mass circulation magazines to prescribe their own mimicry of straight people as model behavior for everyone else. Whatever their actual influence, Andrew Sullivan, Camille Paglia, and other spokespersons for nobody offer the Orwellian spectacle of conformity posing as iconoclasm.”—Gary Indiana, author of Depraved Indifference and Resentment

“Goldstein takes on the right-wing queer media darlings Andrew Sullivan, Camille Paglia, Norah Vincent et al. with insight and up-to-the-minute urgency. It’s about time someone took some of the hot air out of their inflated balloons.”—Esther Newton, author of Mother Camp and Cherry Grove, Fire Island

“Whether you think you will agree with the main argument or not, you will learn from this book. Richard Goldstein writes with shrewd insight, wide sympathies, and enviable clarity. No one has a more persuasive assessment of the urgencies of the present and the legacies of the past for queer people. I wish everyone I know ... gay, straight, or whatever ... would read it.”—Michael Warner, author of The Trouble with Normal and editor of Fear of a Queer Planet

Richard Goldstein is an executive editor of The Village Voice and the author of several books including The Poetry of Rock, Goldstein's Greatest Hits, and Reporting the Counterculture. He is the winner of the 2001 GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination) columnist of the year award.