Gay Ideas [Paperback]

Richard D. Mohr (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In one of these combative, impassioned, often controversial essays, Mohr, professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois, defends "outing" (making public another person's homosexuality against that person's wishes) as a moral act, a means to prevent gays from participating in their own oppression. Reviewing the Supreme Court's dismal record on gay rights, he argues that the Court's recent decisions on homosexuality are instruments by which federal courts are reversing blacks' civil rights. The author chides the gay activist group ACT-UP for a tendency to embrace "quick leftward-leaning ideological fixes." He interprets the AIDS Quilt commemorating AIDS victims as "a source of ideals," not merely a political statement. Mohr finds homoerotic resonances in Wagner's Parsifal and splices this analysis together with 36 explicit artworks by Robert Mapplethorpe and others in an attempt to show that "gay men have more to offer democracy than democracy has had to offer gay men." He also exposes anti-gay stereotyes as sources of unexamined fear and hatred.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Mohr (philosophy, Univ. of Illinois-Urbana) has a talent for turning an argument on its head just to see it topple. In this collection of essays on some of the more controversial topics in gay studies, sometimes the argument topples and sometimes it just wobbles a bit. On the future of civil rights laws, Mohr deftly examines the Supreme Court's apparent decision to drop the right to privacy as a Constitutional principle as expressed in the Bowers v. Hardwick case. However, in arguing against the notion of the social construction of homosexuality, Mohr confuses the biological condition of homosexuality with the issue of gay identity and culture. The concept of "outing" closeted gay celebrities and politicians takes on the nobility of a moral crusade despite an unnecessarily complex argument. This book has stirred controversy even before its publication; as reported in the press, it was turned down by nine publishers and 23 printers. Most of the controversy surrounds Mohr's use of explicit, homoerotic illustrations to support the thesis that homosexuality offers society an ideal model for the principle of equality. Recommended for academic libraries or larger public libraries with informed lay readers.
- Jeffery Ingram, Newport P.L., Ore.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (August 30, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807079219
• ISBN-13: 978-0807079218
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,389,161 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars cultural scar tissue, December 14, 2011

By 

Bruce P. Barten (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gay Ideas (Paperback)

It took me several years to take Gay Ideas seriously as a book of legal analysis of discrimination issues that compared the United States Supreme Court decision in 1984, quoting:

"Private biases may be outside the reach

of the law, but the law cannot,

directly or indirectly, give them effect" (p. 57)

with the six official reasons given by the military for barring lesbian and gay soldiers. Having a Supreme Court that applies "the ordinary high-tier equal protection analytic that it had nominally set out for itself" (p. 56) in a chapter called "Black Law and Gay Law" makes hemlock for Socrates seem like an ordinary remedy for what people think.

I was looking through some things I wrote in 1995 to see if I could find a better example of how arguing about people who claim to be victims is the cultural scar Americans have learned like I learned how to confront Professor Walter Arnold Kaufmann for coming to the United States in 1939 as a Jew who had been born in Germany in 1921. Bob Dylan was my Mr. Jones in that confrontation. People are such moving targets that the best joke is to laugh at where people have been like it was in the Lenny Bruce "Thank You Mask Man" :

What the hell do you want the horse for?

For the act.

0 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Experts on the verge of insanity., November 7, 2001

By 

Bruce P. Barten - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gay Ideas (Paperback)

Reading this book was an exercise in democracy for me, and it wasn't too surprising to find the idea that promiscuous gay encounters are a much better paradigm for democracy than anything that heterosexists ever thought up. At times, it hardly seems likely that any country will actually embrace democratic ideals as heartily as gay liberation has been emphasized in the American media, but this perspective serves to demonstrate a real relationship between political theory and the ideas in this book, and there are a lot of ideas in this book.

Before saying anything unfortunate, I should admit that my closest brush with insanity about these things might involve a sexual situation which was purely hetersexual, involving a woman who was proud that she was 18 years old and no longer subject to certain restrictions which our society imposes on children, but that my own belief that women turn into old frumps at the age of 28 was what made it crazy for me to think that she had a long way to go before she would be 28. I really don't know enough about gay men to speculate on when any of them might reach my feelings on what they do and react in an insane manner about their own behavior, and it is pure speculation and fantasy on my part that any of them will ever look back on their behavior in quite the same way as a woman who has become an old frump who calls her husband at work every day to tell him, "I love you," but who doesn't quite mean it the same way as when two of us were headed back to work, after lunch, and I told her, "I forgot to nibble on your ear."