However lost on critics, not to mention members of the gay establishment at the time, "Faggots" is a brilliant Mepinnean satire that takes as the object of its satire the intellectual conceit of gay sexual liberation, and the notion that gay culture would occupy a leadership position in showing America how to overcome its sexual prudery and commitment to values such as fidelity, monogamy, and true love. In fact, Kramer explores a subculture is which nothing is taboo except for the concept of monogamous love between men, which everyone says they want and no one does anything positive to achieve.
The central protagonist in this epic sexual-cultural-historical novel is the screenwriter Ned Lemish, who is a stand in for Larry Kramer. He descends into an underground sex world in New York City, as in Fire Island, in which no position, combination of positions, times and places for sex, or sexual behaviors are off limits. The grand scene occurs when a drop dead gorgeous young man who wants to be a model comes to New York, is given drugs, and is gradually swooped upon by an army of vulturous men, who gang rape him and others until the point of unconsciousness. There is a scene, in Fire Island, of the ultimate sexual masochism, in which a man who refuses to love Fred submits himself to anal fist sex administered by a horde of men who participate in and watch this spectacle as if it has the sacred meaning of a transformational ritual. Kramer deplores the taboo on faithful love, as he deplores the situation where the only way gay men can communicate is through sex and more sex.