Fone takes his readers through an overview of how gays have been viewed in Western culture from the Classical (Graeco-Roman) World to modern America. As you can guess from the title, it highlights the negative ways in which gay men have been treated from simple discrimination to persecution and death, which in some ways seems preferable to the other torture-like punishments. This brings us into the areas of society that deal with medicine, religion, law could, and just simple interaction with others.

In some ways, Fone compares the treatment of gay men as being similar to that of Jews in the West. We have often been perceived as the scapegoat for various ills that strike against a community. As a result, our punishment or destruction will resolve that issue. I am not sure that I would agree with that belief, but there is no question that there seems to be something that has kept gays as a focus of mistreatment by the ruling classes for millenia.

One thing that really surprised me was the total lack of information relating to lesbians. Since homophobia effects both sexes, I would have thought he would have tried to include information about the treatment of the fairer sex when it comes to the history of homophobia.

The presentation of history is easy to follow, though the narrations is dray in many sections. He turns to a number of good quality academic resources to supplement his arguments, but I am not sure how many people would finish the book to the conclusion because of its lack of an interesting writing style.

With that said, I was glad that I read the book, though I found myself reading a chapter here and there between reading other books because I couldn't take just reading through the whole book from cover to cover at once.