Listening to Gessen, you get a feel for the nihilism, narcissism and amour propre of our gender Robespierres. In their world, there is no solid nature, and no defining line between childhood and maturity. Children should be trusted to make decisions we usually restrict to adults. Queering everything, as Foucault showed, means breaking down any and all prohibitions. It does not surprise me that a postmodern movement that began by saying that children can legitimately consent to sex with adults would eventually argue they can legitimately consent to having their bodies permanently altered before they even hit puberty. If you build a movement on queerness, there is no limit to the norms and safeguards it won’t seek to destroy, including the very existence of a non-queer homosexual life — i.e. the life that most gays and lesbians live.

One more thing: the oldest and deepest slur against homosexual men is that we are not truly men; that our love for men renders us some kind of female. We spent decades insisting otherwise — only to have the queers tell us we’re just performing masculinity. Insisting on our essential maleness was intrinsic to gay liberation; as was the celebration of the intact male body, and its beauty. Just as the religious right told gay men to get used to liking vaginas, so too does the queer left. And just as the Christianists told us we weren’t men, so too do the queers.

If gay men and lesbians want to return to liberal politics, to protect gay children, and to win back the sane center, we are going to have to disown and distance ourselves from this nihilist extremism.