The Trouble with Normal

Blurb

The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life is a book by Michael Warner that discusses the role of same-sex marriage as a goal for gay rights activists. First published in 1999 by The Free Press, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, it was re-published in 2000 in paperback by Harvard University Press. Warner argues that the right to marry is an inadequate and ultimately undesirable goal for gay rights activism. As well as addressing marriage, he considers other areas in which public discourse stigmatizes certain sexual behaviors, including through sensationalist coverage of sex scandals, public zoning initiatives that marginalize the sex industry, and the attempted use of shame to manage sexually transmitted disease. The book has been described as a classic of the debates on normalcy as a goal for the gay rights movement, and as an important contribution to queer theory.