Eschaton

David E. gets to the heart of Epstein's Snobbery

"Jews and homosexuals have always felt themselves the potential -- and often real -- victims of snobbery, and of course much worse than snobbery," Epstein observes in a chapter charmingly titled "Fags and Yids." The "of course" is a nice touch, though this vigorously reactionary belletrist is scarcely prepared to say, "Of course fags and yids perished together at Auschwitz." For, as anyone familiar with the arc of his career knows, Joseph Epstein once went so far as to invoke what some have likened to a "final solution" to the "homosexual problem."

"If I had the power to do so, I would wish homosexuality off the face of this earth," he declared in "Homo/Hetero: The Struggle for Sexual Identity," a September 1970 cover story for Harper's magazine that inspired an unprecedented protest demonstration in the publication's offices -- a protest in which I participated, and aftershocks of which continue to this very day.