This book offers an argument against the prevailing male-dominated, hedonistic-centered culture that for so long has defined what it means to be gay in a twisted and wrong way. Most of the establishment gay community has bought into it because it crafts gay identity in terms most favorable to it.

It is time, as Nicholas F. Benton has argued since his activism in the earliest days of the post-Stonewall gay movement, for gays to define themselves on their own terms and not those of the dominant culture. Benton's studies suggest that gay people correspond best to the ancient Greek archetype of the Promethean life-giving model, not today's dominant archetypal Dionysian pleasure-seeking model.

It is time to begin shaping a new gay identity and culture based on this discovery. We are not conformists with this dominant culture, or enemies who define ourselves against it. We are constructive non-conformists whose role is to shepherd society to a better place.