The End of Gay (and the Death of Heterosexuality)

John Stanley is a policy advisor at the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and
Universities.

In creating this speculative treatise, Bert Archer, a former magazine
columnist (Fab, Quill & Quire), reflected on his sex life (as well the
sex lives of acquaintances) and combined his musings with a reading of
recent accounts of homosexuality. His central thesis is that the
postmodern era has resulted in the disappearance of sexual categories
such as homosexuality and heterosexuality. He distorts the sexual
continuum model by denying the existence of “absolute gay” and
“absolute straight” categories and asserting instead a belief in the
pansexuality of contemporary society.

Much of the “evidence” the author has gathered is anecdotal, and
the few statistical studies he cites (Kinsey’s reports) are 50 years
old and have been discredited by most statisticians for their
self-selected sampling. Archer’s prose is an unwieldy blend of complex
sentences, colloquialisms, and social science jargon. In fact, the most
interesting and well-written parts of The End of Gay are found in the
quotations from Allan Bérubé’s masterful study Coming Out Under
Fire.