... refrains from stopping at the obvious answers to the complications it raises. When writing about people like Roy Cohn and J. Edgar Hoover, who have been subject to extensive research already, or Philip Johnson, the architect whose Glass House is an obvious metaphor for contemporaneous queer existence, Bad Gays manages to bring something new to the table by insisting on focusing not on how a certain identity can coexist with its evil antithesis of oppressive actions, but rather on how queer sensibilities interweave with power relations and the choices people make regarding their power. That is the thesis at the core of the book. To understand the 'bad gays' of history is to understand how to choose a contemporary queer movement that stands as all-inclusive and in solidarity with its counterparts.

The authors express an acute understanding that people have always lived in a stew of history, and they situate each of their subjects not just within the ideas and attitudes of their day, but within the legal and religious constraints that defined them as outcasts and abominations. Still, they never forget that they’re talking about conquerors and colonialists, racists and antisemites, criminals and conspirators, from Hadrian to Ronnie Kray to Roy Cohn.

The purpose is not to excuse them but to understand them and their cultures, out of which the present day evolved. We see how same-sex relationships started as acceptable (within strict social-status rules), to being a sin, to being a crime, and how that shaped the lives and personalities of each era’s 'bad' gays. The historical perspective is fascinating, and the bits of salty gay humor sprinkled throughout liven the proceedings considerably..

... intriguing if disjointed.

... provocative.