LifeOnaPlate wrote:? I thought the book was poorly executed. This has nothing to do with the author's sexual orientation. (Though perhaps it lent into his bias in the interesting use of sources, etc.) That isn't my point. It's poor scholarship in my opinion, and not because of homosexuality. Again: underimpressed.
I'd be interested in hearing your elaboration on this, LoaP. Having read the two major reviews of
Same-sex Dynamics[i] in [i]FARMS Review, I came away with the same impression as Coca Cola---namely, that critics of it dislike it primarily because they feel that Quinn has some sort of a "pro-gay agenda." The critiques of Quinn's scholarship are flimsy to say the least. Perhaps the most egregious of these was the bit that attempted to brand him as being dishonest due to the way a photograph was cropped, or something like that. (Mitton and James were, I believe, the authors of that particular smear piece.)
In any case, this is all of a piece. The apologetic approach to Quinn's work has always been the same: brand him as dishonest/untrustworthy; express "disappointment"; fail to ever cite any real failing in scholarship; re-direct attention over towards the hackjob FROB articles; etc., etc.