Many conservatives denounce gays as a menace to family values.
Yet while obsessing on the gay issue, many of their publications tiptoe cautiously around issues of heterosexual family breakup that pose a far greater threat to children's welfare. Yet careful scrutiny of these same troubled life histories points toward quite different conclusions about the intrinsic costs of unhappy, self-destructive behavior, whether occurring in gays or straights. They took their best shot, but it was only a pop-gun. Didi Herman, in The Antigay Agenda , examines conservative Protestantism s battle against gay equality, treating the antigay stance dispassionately. Despite a couple of miscues, the book s overall accomplishment is impressive.