Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating breakdown of the politics of marriage
Review: As a straight woman and a strong advocate for gay marriage, this book did not at first appeal to me. What could I learn from a book by a gay man arguing against gay marriage? It turns out that I had a lot to learn. Although I still believe that anyone who wants to marry should have that right, after reading this book I no longer want to get married. This breaks down the descriminatory nature of marriage and the politics of sexual shame in such an interesting way. This should be required reading for everyone--gay, straight, single, married, whatever. It's not an argument that you hear very often, but it's a very important one! Read this book--it might upset you, but it will force you to examine ideas like homosexuality, marriage, and sex in new ways.
Rating:
Summary: A different perspective
Review: In this excellent book, Michael Warner explains how gay and lesbian activists are pursuing the wrong goal by advocating and working for the right to be legally married. Warner points out that, instead, the focus ought to be on separating certain legal benefits and perks that are now only available to those in a legal marriage from one's marital status. Such marriage-linked benefits not only discriminate against gays and lesbians, but also heterosexuals in nontraditional relationships, and singles of all categories. I found quite a bit in this book that was relevant and useful to me as a nonmonogamous heterosexual. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A different perspective
Review: In this excellent book, Michael Warner explains how gay and lesbian activists are pursuing the wrong goal by advocating and working for the right to be legally married. Warner points out that, instead, the focus ought to be on separating certain legal benefits and perks that are now only available to those in a legal marriage from one's marital status. Such marriage-linked benefits not only discriminate against gays and lesbians, but also heterosexuals in nontraditional relationships, and singles of all categories. I found quite a bit in this book that was relevant and useful to me as a nonmonogamous heterosexual. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: makes a great wedding gift...
Review: In this wonderful manifesto, Warner argues that the recent emphasis on marriage and normalcy within the gay and lesbian movement (or, as Harvard University Press typesetters put it at one point, "the hay and lesbian movement") undermines the hard-fought struggles and betrays the valuable lessons of an earlier generation of queer activism, and strips queerness of its central insights about human sexuality. This is not just a timely intervention within gay politics, however. It is also a smart analysis of the regulation and disposition of urban space, a sophisticated reflection on the meanings of privacy and publicity in our culture, a disturbingly persuasive indictment of the institution of civil marriage, and the most resonant non-fiction on the subject of sex I have read in a long time. Most of all, this is a deeply ethical book that will speak to a range of readers, whether or not they are "hay," or have any abiding interest in the politics of that identity.
Rating:
Summary: makes a great wedding gift...
Review: In this wonderful manifesto, Warner argues that the recent emphasis on marriage and normalcy within the gay and lesbian movement (or, as Harvard University Press typesetters put it at one point, "the hay and lesbian movement") undermines the hard-fought struggles and betrays the valuable lessons of an earlier generation of queer activism, and strips queerness of its central insights about human sexuality. This is not just a timely intervention within gay politics, however. It is also a smart analysis of the regulation and disposition of urban space, a sophisticated reflection on the meanings of privacy and publicity in our culture, a disturbingly persuasive indictment of the institution of civil marriage, and the most resonant non-fiction on the subject of sex I have read in a long time. Most of all, this is a deeply ethical book that will speak to a range of readers, whether or not they are "hay," or have any abiding interest in the politics of that identity.
Rating: 
Summary: Very worthwhile, but stuck in the past.
Review: It's difficult to critique a book that you learn something from, particularly when what you learn is fundamental to who you are and what you do. "The Problem With Normal" was one of those books, and I'm grateful for its influence, but at the same time I am ambivalent about the way it was written and the approach it takes to contemporary developments in queer sexual culture. Warner argues against the concept of "marriage" for gays and lesbians, and writes passionately in favor of a public, queer sexual culture. Along the way, he makes some very strong and very correct observations about the "politics of sexual shame". It is in this last subject that I found the book to be most valuable. He describes very clearly the way sexual shame is used in politics at all levels, and writes beautifully about the inversion of this politics - the celebration of debasement and abjection - in camp culture. Even though I've been surrounded with this politics all my life, I never really saw it for what it is. This understanding alone was worth the price of the book. As someone who has also spoken against public sex in the past, I find myself reversing my opinion on the subject. Thanks to Warner's writing, I see the value in things I had until now taken for granted. It's too long an argument to reproduce here, but having once seen public sex as little more than a public nuisance - and a puzzling one at that, given that its practitioners risked arrest and beating for their efforts - I now understand it as a cornerstone of a much larger tradition, one that all queers benefit from even if we don't participate in it ourselves. As I write this, I see it as a very counterintuitive statement, and it's a hard one to justify in our current antisexual climate. But I also see it as very true; it just took a long time to get to that truth. That said, I have two big complaints about the book. One is simply bad editing. It's got a lot of typos, and even a short string of nonsense characters, as if the author fell asleep for a moment with his fingers resting on the keyboard. Whatever happened to his spell checker? This is extremely distracting. His language is also a problem. He combines a repetitive, simplistic style with some very tortured sentence constructions and ten-dollar words that not even the most well-read person could know. (What does "flagitiously" mean?) I chalk this up to the pretentiousness and bad writing habits of academia. But my more substantial complaint is that Warner seems stuck in a (possibly romanticized) political past, and doesn't consider the resiliency of queers in the face of political change. Yes, America, and New York City in particular, is enjoying a new wave of Puritanism that is snuffing out many traditional sources of gay culture. But at the same time, new ones are springing up to replace them. Take the Internet; Warner mentions this only in passing, and then only to dismiss it. Yet there is a whole new Internet queer culture, one which is more powerful and more vibrant than the porn-store and pickle-park culture ever was. Rather than trying to hang on to old expressions of queerness, I believe it is better to embrace new ones. Even the Internet has suffered attack, but it is easier to defend, and has weathered these attacks far better than the New York sex scene. On the whole, I recommend this book, if only as an antidote to the nauseating hetero-centric culture of mass media. If someone as kinky and queer as myself can gain new understanding for reading it, it must have something going for it.
Rating:
Summary: Very worthwhile, but stuck in the past.
Review: It's difficult to critique a book that you learn something from, particularly when what you learn is fundamental to who you are and what you do. "The Problem With Normal" was one of those books, and I'm grateful for its influence, but at the same time I am ambivalent about the way it was written and the approach it takes to contemporary developments in queer sexual culture. Warner argues against the concept of "marriage" for gays and lesbians, and writes passionately in favor of a public, queer sexual culture. Along the way, he makes some very strong and very correct observations about the "politics of sexual shame". It is in this last subject that I found the book to be most valuable. He describes very clearly the way sexual shame is used in politics at all levels, and writes beautifully about the inversion of this politics - the celebration of debasement and abjection - in camp culture. Even though I've been surrounded with this politics all my life, I never really saw it for what it is. This understanding alone was worth the price of the book. As someone who has also spoken against public sex in the past, I find myself reversing my opinion on the subject. Thanks to Warner's writing, I see the value in things I had until now taken for granted. It's too long an argument to reproduce here, but having once seen public sex as little more than a public nuisance - and a puzzling one at that, given that its practitioners risked arrest and beating for their efforts - I now understand it as a cornerstone of a much larger tradition, one that all queers benefit from even if we don't participate in it ourselves. As I write this, I see it as a very counterintuitive statement, and it's a hard one to justify in our current antisexual climate. But I also see it as very true; it just took a long time to get to that truth. That said, I have two big complaints about the book. One is simply bad editing. It's got a lot of typos, and even a short string of nonsense characters, as if the author fell asleep for a moment with his fingers resting on the keyboard. Whatever happened to his spell checker? This is extremely distracting. His language is also a problem. He combines a repetitive, simplistic style with some very tortured sentence constructions and ten-dollar words that not even the most well-read person could know. (What does "flagitiously" mean?) I chalk this up to the pretentiousness and bad writing habits of academia. But my more substantial complaint is that Warner seems stuck in a (possibly romanticized) political past, and doesn't consider the resiliency of queers in the face of political change. Yes, America, and New York City in particular, is enjoying a new wave of Puritanism that is snuffing out many traditional sources of gay culture. But at the same time, new ones are springing up to replace them. Take the Internet; Warner mentions this only in passing, and then only to dismiss it. Yet there is a whole new Internet queer culture, one which is more powerful and more vibrant than the porn-store and pickle-park culture ever was. Rather than trying to hang on to old expressions of queerness, I believe it is better to embrace new ones. Even the Internet has suffered attack, but it is easier to defend, and has weathered these attacks far better than the New York sex scene. On the whole, I recommend this book, if only as an antidote to the nauseating hetero-centric culture of mass media. If someone as kinky and queer as myself can gain new understanding for reading it, it must have something going for it.
Rating: 
Summary: Hypocritical and Polemical
Review: Michael Warner opens THE TROUBLE WITH NORMAL by tackling the imbedded sexual shame in our culture. He sees the desire of gays and lesbians to marry as part of their desire to be accepted as "normal" and a part of mainstream culture. The desire for marriage comes about in many of the same ways for gays and lesbians as it does for heterosexuals. Marriage, in Warner's words, is yoked to the benefits of status, respectability, and other countless privileges, such as health care, housing and tax preferences, and parental rights. He recommends separating these rights from legal marriage, which the state already regulates in ways that are too intimate and controlling. He says we should redefine "family to reflect the reality of people's [extended] relationships." (page 120) Many states still have laws prohibiting oral, anal, and group sex, even for married persons. Warner describes most eloquently how gay marriage is likely to alienate other sexual "deviants" who are lower on the sexual hierarchy, such as prostitutes and other sex workers, transgendered persons, and others. Those who prefer some kind of public sex or "who aspire to a different kind of sexual maturity besides that of a married couple" will be further ostracized and demonized by the split in the LGBTQ communities into those who are married and those who are not (and don't want to be). This split mirrors what has already happened to people in the heterosexual communities who choose intimacies that are different from those who are choose traditional marriage. For non-gay populations, this would include "queers" who are polyamorous, bisexual, and celibate. Warner's analysis of the politics of shame applies to all "sexual outlaws." He raises important questions of sex education for everyone. He advocates the continued availability of public places where all kinds of sexual information is shared without fear of arrest or attack and where people might meet and mingle with those who share their preferences and passions. THE TROUBLE WITH NORMAL was, for me, a whole education in sexual freedom and autonomy, showing how the politics of sexual shame and the desire to "fit in" hurts us all. In particular, sexual shame and the push to appear "normal" harms those who are HIV positive or at greater risk for STDs because of the growing paucity of sexual information in the public sphere. ~~Joan Mazza, author of Dream Back Your Life; Dreaming Your Real Self; Who's Crazy Anyway; and Exploring Your Sexual Self (a guided journal).
Rating:
Summary: An antidote to Andrew Sullivan's pablum
Review: This book speaks beyond academia without ever talking down to its audience, about things most of us still debate despite having fewer and fewer forums to do so -- about queer ethics, sex and intimacy, marriage rights, public sex. Though I already admired Warner's activist and intellectual work (and, full disclosure here, am an academic), I was moved by the passion and precision with which he argues. There's nothing "snipey," libertarian, or more-radical-than-thou about this book, other reviews notwithstanding; it's a book with a mind and a soul. Warner clearly respects the confusion many of us feel (especially the many who are outside of both academia and the "national" movements and who cannot find activist public spheres that make sense to them anymore), but will not let our confusion dissolve into easy acceptance of the "national" movement's sanctimonies about "our" lives. I imagine that some people will dismiss this book without reading it, as an argument for "radical promiscuity" coming from the privileged position of a white gay male academic. Please don't make that mistake. Warner quite rightly sees the marriage movement and the privatization of public space as the biggest threats to LGBTQ movements and everyday lives. But he also clearly cares about, and lushly imagines a future for, the most complicated forms of pleasure, belonging and caretaking that queer people have invented. Oddly enough -- I'd only say this on Amazon, and it's not what I think is crucial about the book -- it's a book I can imagine giving to my biological family members, not because it tells them I am normal after all, but because it actually might make my life intelligible to them. In the way it bridges a clarion call to activism and an intelligent dissection of the status quo, The Trouble with Normal does work that no trade book coming from the queer left has managed to do so far.
Rating: 
Summary: rethink your politics
Review: This is a book that could serve as a wake-up call. ... . Warner grounds his arguments in contemporary politics and offers an intervention worth reading. Even if he doesn't change your views, you will look a little more carefully at fund-raising mail from mainstream gay organizations. It would be nice to see this analysis extended to other issues, but the marriage debate serves as a boiler plate for other arguments.
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