Gareth Roberts On The New Homophobia

A review of 'Gay Shame'

Like most sex realists, “I certainly never expected to spend much of my autumn years being outraged on behalf of lesbians and fuming about men trashing women’s basic rights to privacy or fairness in sport,” Gareth Roberts writes. “I didn’t anticipate the gay rights movement transmogrifying into a cross between the Church of Scientology, Heathers: The Musical and Act 4 of The Crucible.”

Roberts did not set out to leave a mark with this book, either. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure than this book becoming a curio, a museum piece of a strange and vanished era,” he writes. “I would like it to date very, very quickly.” He will not get what he wants, however, because this is a genuinely funny and engaging book about a deeply serious topic, namely the role of Gay Shame, per the title, in The Rise of Gender Ideology and the New Homophobia, per the subtitle. Historians will want to read it.

As a gay man who is old enough to remember the gay culture and homophobia of the past, Roberts i…