"From time immemorial," Emma Goldman declared in 1913, "the wise and practical have denounced every heroic spirit... idealists and visionaries, foolish enough to throw caution to the winds, have advanced mankind." Scott Tucker belongs to the second category. He dares to call himself not only queer but non-monogamous, and - horror of horrors - a democratic socialist. Tucker reminds us that Oscar Wilde shared all three stances, which is not immodesty, but a salutary reminder that queer liberation can and must be linked with social and economic liberation. For Tucker, freedom is indivisible, a position which leads him into witty polemics against his fellow gay activists, not to mention the current President of the United States.

The real achievement of The Queer Question (South End Press, $30 hardcover/$18 paper) is Tucker's linkage of queer consciousness with class: "For many people in this country, including queers, the social climate is only tolerable at best, and sometimes murderous at worst." His idealism consists in connecting the oppression queers feel to sexism, classism and the horrors of "the corporate state."

Tucker refers to Wilhelm Reich, the Freudian heretic who made these same connections over 60 years ago, but to his credit, The Queer Question (unique among books of its sort) advances no Theory and shills for no Discourse. Indeed, the essay on Foucault brilliantly criticizes him as a "materialist mystic" whose bravura philosophizing blinds his readers to social fact.

Most of the essays are, however, more topical, centering especially on the culture wars of the past 10 years with special reference to the queers' "battered wife" relationship to Bill Clinton. Tucker makes the point, so obvious that almost nobody else seems to get it, that a President who ends welfare and backs the Defense of Marriage Act was never a "friend" of gays and lesbians, merely a shrewd opportunist. One wishes that Tucker can find the time for an essay devoted purely to the growing literature about Clinton and his queer "allies," like David Mixner's memoir.

In The Queer Question has a weakness, it's precisely this topicality. I suspect that in 10 or 20 years, the book will need footnotes to explain who are half of Tucker's targets - a hazard of all political writing. But right now, right here, the book should inspire any Left radical with hope and canny tactical advice.

Although he doesn't write much about ACT UP, Tucker's commitment to the group evidently taught him many of the bitter lessons he recounts here: lessons in the uselessness of "liberals," in the importance of connecting queer struggles with anti-racist and anti-sexist battles, in the indivisibility of freedom. One might guess that Tucker's vision of socialism stems at least partly from ACT UP's freewheeling style. But since he lays out no program for American socialism different from, say, Michael Harrington, he probably intends his book as (to quote Emerson) provocation, not instruction.

And Tucker is provocative! Camille Paglia is "the Rush Limbaugh of post-feminism." Larry Kramer displays "the anarchism of the arrogant." And - an insight worth the price of admission - "Liberalism is class-consciousness with a bad conscience." With jabs like these, Tucker forces you to think (even while you gasp and laugh) and rethink your own positions. The essayist who comes to mind is Gore Vidal, and since Vidal may be the best around, that's a compliment to Tucker's wit.

The other great virtue of The Queer Question is its historical perspective. An essay on the Netherlands reminds on that persecuting queers didn't start with Jesse Helms, and throughout the book Tucker puts into context 1997's struggles by referring to the ugly traditions of intolerance against queers and all sexual "deviants." Yet Tucker reads history in a more hopeful light as well, very much in the socialist tradition of Marx and Gramsci - as the forward movement of the struggle for freedom. To that extent, he's an idealist, the very trait he deplores in Foucault. He does seem to believe that queers' struggles to belong to some unfolding, historical design.

Let's hope Tucker has that one right. Certainly the closet doors of America can't be nailed shut just because the Falwells and the Buchanans want them sealed. The Queer Question reminds one that, however disgusting this moment in American life may be, there is a revolutionary tradition we can connect with, and also the certainty that even bigotry may yet be forced to yield.