‘The shameful antidote to prideful feel-good politics‘
Ed. Mark Simpson (Freedom Editions, 1996)
From the dust jacket:
‘THE YEAR’S MOST CONTROVERSIAL BOOK’
BBC Radio 5
‘The essays gathered in anti-gay represent the earliest onslaught by the new guerrillas and petroleuses of what might be termed the post-gay era, savaging imported American PC pieties, lambasting the sex-and-shopping body-fascism of gay clubland and caning the insistent brainlessness of queer baby-boomers, but dedicated also, it seems, to trashing the sacred exclusiveness of faggot identity in some niftily subversive snips at the barbed wire along the hetero-homo divide. Their leader is the brilliantly buccaneering mark Simpson, whose opening parodic monologue ‘gay dream believer’ satanically debases the coinage of substance abusing disco-chic’
Jonathan Keates, The Spectator
‘When I was reading it, I just kept thinking: thank fucking god someone did this, because the culture we’ve created is killing us… Whatever happened to our individuality, our differences? Gay culture has just become this big pink… Thing, which makes me want to puke.’
Aiden Shaw, Time Out New York
‘DANGEROUS’
Gay Times
‘ANTI-GAY HAS DIVIDED THE HOMOSEXUAL COMMUNITY’
The Independent
‘SIMPSON IS A CUNT’
Boyz
‘ARTICULATE AND WITTY… TO GAY FUNDAMENTALISTS MARK SIMPSON IS THE ANTI-CHRIST’
Vogue
‘RECKLESS’
Genre
‘SIMPSON IS FAR TOO MUCH A MAVERICK AND TOO ACERBIC’
Diva
‘ACID’
Bay Area Reporter
‘ACID’
The Guardian
‘THE OVERWHELMING CYNICISM OF MARK SIMPSON IS QUITE FRIGHTENING COMING FROM SOMEONE SO YOUNG’
Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association
‘AN INTELLECTUAL ENEMA FOR TODAY’S MENTALLY CONSTIPATED GAY GENERATION’
Tribune
‘I ALMOST HATE TO AGREE WITH ANYTHING SIMPSON HAS TO SAY’
London Review of Books
‘EVERTHING SIMPSON SAYS IS TRUE. WHAT’S MORE, HE’S FUNNY’
Têtu, Paris
‘AS IF YOU HAVE STUMBLED INTO A SPIRITED, RATHER SUBVERSIVE DINNER PARTY’
The Tablet
‘MY CHORTLES STARTLED NOT ONLY MYSELF BUT SEVERAL FELLOW PASSENGERS’
Scotsgay
‘DARING… PROVOCATIVE’
Lambda Book Report
‘LEFTIST’
Out
‘SIMPSON… IMBUES THE BOOK WITH THE VAPID APPEAL OF A COMPASSIONLESS MARGARET THATCHER’
City life
‘SIMPSON… COMES ACROSS AS UNACCOUNTABLY SMUG’
The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review
‘The contributors take issue with the coercive nature of prevailing gay orthodoxies, pointing out that oppression and prejudice do not become legitimate simply because they happen to be practised by the previously oppressed.’
The Times
Available on Amazon
An update, September 2022: