1. This essay emerged from my despondency after the Right's victory in the November 1994 elections, but it was also inspired by the political and theoretical originality of Lisa Duggan's and Nan Hunter's individually and jointly written essays. I want to thank Chris Bull, Amber Hollibaugh, Loring McAlpin, Esther Newton, and Michael Rothberg for their comments on earlier versions of this essay. I owe special thanks to Matthew Lore, my companion in conversations about so many things, for his comments, encouragement, and company as I wrote this essay. I'm afraid that I never would have written it without David Trend's encouragement (and persistent but gentle nagging).

2. See J. Hunter, Culture Wars. For a view of these issues from the Left in the United Kingdom, see the essays in Jeffrey Weeks, ed., The Lesser Evil and the Greater Good: The Theory and the Politics of Social Diversity (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1994).

3. Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam, 1987).

4. See Josh Gamson, "Silence, Death, and the Invisible Enemy: AIDS Activism and Social Movement 'Newness,'" Social Problems 34, no. 6 (October 1989).

5. For a history of the Religious Right, see Sara Diamond, Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right (Boston: South End Press, 1989); and Dallas A. Blanchard, The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Rise of the Religious Right: From Polite to Fiery Protest (New York: Twayne, 1994).

6. For an assessment of the Religious Right's effect on U.S. politics, see E. J. Dionne, Why Americans Hate Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991).

7. Irving Kristol, "My Cold War," National Interest (spring 1993), p. 86.

8. For a thorough analysis of the family values agenda, see Judith Stacey, In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), particularly pp. 52-82.

9. Duberman, Stonewall.

10. Arlene Stein, "Three Models of Sexuality: Drives, Identities, and Practices," Sociological Theory 7, no. 1 (1989).

11. Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983).

12. Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).

13. The conservative antigay rhetoric has used marketing research on gay and lesbian purchasing power to argue that gay men and lesbians are a privileged and economically powerful group that has no need of civil rights protections. For a critique, see M. V. Lee Badgett, "Beyond Biased Samples: Challenging the Myths on the Economic Status of Lesbians and Gay Men," in Amy Gluckman and Betsy Reed, eds., Homo Economics: Capitalism, Community, and Lesbian and Gay Life (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 65-72.

14. For the political, medical, and cultural context, see the essays by Douglas Crimp and Paula Treichler in Crimp, ed., AIDS. For some historical and political background on GMHC, see Philip Kayal, Bearing Witness: Gay Men's Health Crisis and the Politics of AIDS (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993).

15. See Shilts, Mayor of Castro Street.

16. Larry Kramer, Reports from the Holocaust, rev. ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995).

17. Douglas Crimp, "How to Have Promiscuity in an Epidemic," in AIDS, ed. Crimp.

18. See Crimp with Rolston, AIDS Demo Graphics (Seattle: Bay Press, 1990).

19. See Eric Rofes, "Gay Liberation versus AIDS: Averting Civil War in the 1990s," OUT/LOOK: National Lesbian and Gay Quarterly (spring 1990); also see Crimp's discussion of these issues in his article "Right on, Girlfriend!"

20. See the special section on Queer Nation with articles by Allan Bérubé and Jeffrey Escoffier, Alexander Chee, Steve Cossen, and Maria Maggenti in OUT/LOOK: National Lesbian and Gay Quarterly, no. 11 (winter 1991); 12-23; Lisa Duggan, "Making It Perfectly Queer," Socialist Review 22, no. 1 (January-March 1992): 11-31. See also Warner's introduction to Fear of a Queer Planet, pp. vii-xxxi, and Berlandt and Freeman, "Queer Nationality."

21. The broadside "Queers Read This: I Hate Straights" is reprinted in Mark Blasius and Shane Phelan, eds., We Are Everywhere: A Historical Sourcebook of Gay and Lesbian Politics (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 773-80.

22. For an extensive exploration of this issue, see Larry Gross, Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).

23. Sloan, "Beyond Dialogue," 3.

24. See Warner, introduction to Fear of a Queer Planet.

25. Lisa Duggan, "Queering the State," Social Text, no. 39 (1994): 1-14.

26. For a comparable discussion of racial politics, see Howard Winant, "Postmodern Racial Politics in the United States: Difference and Inequality," Socialist Review 20, no. 1 (January-March 1990): 121-47.

27. Hunter's analysis is discussed in Duggan, "Queering the State"; see also Nan D. Hunter, "Identity, Speech, and Equality," Virginia Law Review 79, no. 7 (October 1993).

28. Badgett, "Wage Effects." For a general survey of economic issues, see Escoffier, "Homo/Economics."

29. Michael Nava and Robert Dawidoff, Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), p. 112.

30. Bruce Bawer, "The Road to Utopia," Advocate, September 20, 1994, 80. Both a detailed critique of the lesbian and gay movement and a detailed working out of the "moderate" strategy appear in Kirk and Madsen, After the Ball; see also Bawer, Place at the Table.

31. I owe this point to Matthew Lore.