Reddit reviews It's a Queer World: Deviant Adventures in Pop Culture (Haworth Gay & Lesbian Studies)

Straight people in general obsess with homosexuality, not just homophobes. It's a huge cultural moment. We're an Other and we hold secrets to life and sex they think are refused to them.

For this, I bring your attention to gay writer Mark Simpson's: It's a Queer World: Deviant Adventures in Pop Culture.

Simpson argues that we're shifting from a society in which heterosexuality is deemed "normal" and homosexuality "abnormal" to one in which different combinations of sexuality and gender roles are totally compatible. As that happens, the assurances that heterosexuals get for being heterosexual -- stability, commitment, security -- become increasingly called into question. The rise in divorce and changing gender roles is making heterosexuality seem as not so stable as it once was. After all, how is heterosexuality "normal" when it is exposed for being as fucked up and dysfunctional as it is? Straight people no longer have any guarantees (if they ever did) that their life will be any better when buying into the heterosexual norm, so what do you do? And of course by the "norm" I mean cultural norms and the way heterosexuality is expressed, not sexual attraction per se.

The elevation of us gays to prominent cultural figures; no, a cultural force or tsunami, then has much to do with this breakdown. As heterosexuals try to grapple with this new reality, we gays are here living in our own reality which we've defined and made central to our lives. We gays have defined ourselves and have come to grips with who we really are, while straight people are increasingly unsure of themselves. Therefore, straight people fear what we represent but also envy us, and are beginning to copy us in everything from style to acting as passive figures of desire who are acted upon and desired by women, not the other way around.

> Whatever the truth behind the sex-confessional imperative of the late twentieth century, homosexuals are, more than anyone else, creatures of this "secret of sex" narrative. It is taken as a given that it is their "secret of sex" -- so much more secret because it was so much more shameful -- which holds the key to their identity; their sexuality is what defines them and is how they choose to define themselves when they "come out." In fact, the coming-out narrative is a myth for our time, a myth in which the homosexual takes on the status of a modern religious hero who, through a process of testing sexual self-inquiry, soul-searching, and self-examination, arrives at the answer to the question "Who am I?" in terms of the sex-confessional question "Whom do I desire?" and then shares that discovery with the world. Or, more succinctly, the homosexual learns to say "yes" to sex and thus to himself. And saying "yes" to oneself is by far the most virtuous thing anyone can do these days; saying "no," the worst possible crime. In short, the homosexual is the existential, expressive star of our modern, individualistic, introspective universe.

For another example, see straight football star Michael Irvin "coming out" as a supporter of GLBT equality on the cover of Out magazine. We're in a bizarre moment in which the ultimate expression of heterosexuality in the Western mind -- a black football star -- is redefined as not only supportive of gay rights, but also pampered, dressed-up, exfoliated and desired for everyone to see.