The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life is a book by Michael Warner, in which the author discusses the role of same-sex marriage as a goal for gay rights activists.

[5] He discusses the part played by the idea of normality in the uneven distribution of sexual shame that inhibits lives, and the negative consequences — including greater risk of violence and disease — that result.

[9] In Chapter Three Warner proposes that by restricting its campaigning to demands for same-sex marriage, the gay rights movement has marginalized and ignored queer counterpublics that it would have served better by presenting a broad range of sexual lives as moral.

Warner argues that, on the contrary, the political use of shame to stigmatize certain kinds of sexual activity actually puts more people at risk of contracting HIV and developing AIDS, by marginalizing those in at-risk communities and restricting access to condoms and safer sex advice.

[12] He also criticizes abstinence-only sex education as "an appalling insult to gay men and lesbians among others"[13] and an inadequate response to the problems of public sexual health, asserting that "shame and stigma are often among the most intractable dimensions of risk.

[16] In these debates Warner was ranged against Andrew Sullivan and Larry Kramer, who argued that the most radical goals the movement could seek were the acceptance of gay life into the political and cultural mainstream, through rights like marriage.

The debate was impassioned; Warner told the Guardian that "This Fifties version of how gay life should be that we've been handed is actually not making a lot of people happy", while Sullivan asked "What could be more boring than to still be referring to yourself as "queer"?