Jamake Highwater is a master storyteller and one of our most visionary writers, hailed as "an eloquent bard, whose words are fire and glory" (Studs Terkel) and "a writer of exceptional vision and power" (Ana"is Nin). Author of more than thirty volumes of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, Highwater--considered by many to be the intellectual heir of Joseph Campbell--has long been intrigued by how our mythological legacies have served as a foundation of modern civilization. Now, in The Mythology of Transgression, he (...) uses his remarkable narrative powers to offer a personal and extraordinarily far-ranging examination of how people who stand outside of society--by dint of their sexual orientation, physical appearance, ideas, artistic inclinations, or ethnic heritage--often achieve lasting, even profound influence upon the culture at large. Drawing from a stunningly rich variety of sources ranging from the arts and literature to biology, physics, psychology, and anthropology, Highwater looks at his own outsider status--as a gay man, an artist, and an orphaned Native American--in an attempt to explore how mythologies from ancient times to the present have shaped the ways we think about social "abnormality" and alienation. Throughout, he points to a paradox at the center of Western values--the competing notions that the outsider is at once sinful and wise, that in everyday life the transgressor is ostracized, while in our most durable folklore and religious legends, heroes must break the rules to achieve greatness. Focusing in particular on homosexuality as a modern metaphor of transgression, Highwater brilliantly mixes personal anecdotes with wide ranging research, leading us on a tour through the history of social conformity and rejection, citing examples that span from Judeo-Christian-Islamic doctrines of good and evil, to the Navajo Nation's ambivalence toward the nature of sexuality, to Carson McCullers's treatment of physical deformity in the novella Member of the Wedding, to Descartes's theories of dualism. He also pays special attention to the debates currently raging in science regarding the biology of homosexuality and provides an engaging discussion of why we are motivated to seek a genetic basis of sexual orientation in the first place. Jamake Highwater has long been celebrated as a writer uniquely suited to give voice to the social outsider. Often provocative, always fascinating, The Mythology of Transgression is a tour de force of eloquent scholarship, a book that will prompt discussion and debate on the subject for years to come. (shrink)

Just consider, for sheer paranoia, the range of synonyms when the mask is ripped, the silence broken, the deferment brutally concluded: angel-face, arse-bandit, auntie, bent, bessie, bugger, bum-banger, bum boy, chicken, cocksucker, daisie, fag, faggot, fairy, flit, fruit, jasper, mincer; molly, nancy boy, nelly, pansy, patapoof, poofter, cream puff, powder puff, queen, queer, shit-stirrer, sissie, swish, sod, turd-burglar, pervert. For Aristophanes, as for Norman Mailer and Mary Whitehouse, buggery equaled coprophagy: a corrupt, destructive, hypocritical, excremental, urban scatology. Heterosexuality equalled the (...) fecund, rural norm. Aristophanes' diet for a giant dung beetle was turds from a buggered boy: "he says he likes them well kneaded."1To this day degeneracy often seems to be just another code word for homosexuality, as does perversion and decadence; this very essay will seem to many a "decadent" project. Nor would I balk at the term as long as it is interpreted in the French sense: intent on fulfilling Baudelaire's program of transforming the erotically passive to the intellectually active, the voluptuous to rational self-mastery.· 1.Literally, "a hetairekos boy": male prostitute, or boy-friend .Harold Beaver, reader of American literature at the University of Warwick, was recently elected to the new chair of American literature at the University of Amsterdam. He has published widely on American literature and is currently completeing a collection of his articles, The Great American Masquerade. (shrink)

Homosexual aversion therapy enjoyed two brief but intense periods of clinical experimentation: between 1950 and 1962 in Czechoslovakia, and between 1962 and 1975 in the British Commonwealth. The specific context of its emergence was the geopolitical polarization of the Cold War and a parallel polarization within psychological medicine between Pavlovian and Freudian paradigms. In 1949, the Pavlovian paradigm became the guiding doctrine in the Communist bloc, characterized by a psychophysiological or materialist understanding of mental illness. It was taken up by (...) therapists in Western countries who were critical of psychoanalysis and sought more ‘scientific’ diagnostic and therapeutic methods that focused on empirical evidence and treating actual symptoms. However, their attitude towards homosexuality often played a decisive role in how they used aversion therapy. Whereas Czechoslovakian researchers cautioned readers about low success rates and agitated for homosexual law reform in 1961, most of their anglophone counterparts selectively ignored or misrepresented the results of ‘the Prague experiment’, instead celebrating single-case ‘success’ stories in their effort to correct ‘abnormal’ sexual orientation. In histories of queer sexuality and its pathologization, the behaviourist paradigm remains almost entirely unmapped. This article provides the most detailed study to date of aversion therapy literature from both sides of the East/West border. In doing so, it contributes to the project not only of ‘decentring Western sexualities’, but of decentring Western sexological knowledge. Given its Pavlovian origins, the history of homosexual aversion therapy can be fully understood only in the context of Cold War transnational sexological knowledge exchange. (shrink)

Homosexuality is criminalised and socially condemned in many places in Africa. This fact seems to suggest that African moral philosophy would likely render homosexuality immoral. Indeed, some of the African philosophical literature tries to suggest that homosexuality is morally wrong. Contrasting with this view, in this article, I will show that Afro-communitarian ethics implies that homosexuality is morally permissible and, indeed, can be an excellent way to promote social harmony. I defend this theory by drawing (...) out the implications of social harmony, and also respond to potential objections from African intellectuals and new natural law theorists. (shrink)

The book analyses the Indian Supreme Court's jurisprudence on homosexuality, its current approach and how its position has evolved in the past ten years. It critically analyses the Court's landmark judgments and its perception of equality, family, marriage and human rights from an international perspective. With the help of European Court of Human Rights' judgments and international conventions, it compares the legal and social discrimination meted out to the Indian LGBTI community with that in the international arena. From a (...) social anthropological perspective, it demonstrates how gay masculinity, although marginalized, serves as a challenge to patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity. This unique book addresses the lack of in-depth literature on gay masculinity, elaborately narrating and analysing contemporary gay masculinity and emerging gay lifestyles in India and highlighting the latest research on the subject of homosexuality in general and in particular with respect to India. It also discusses several new issues concerning the gay men in India supported by the living law approach put forth by Eugen Ehrlich. (shrink)

At the end of the 19th century, the vocabulary of sexuality - perversion - became one of the primary means by which people began to articulate and think about their individuality, their sense of self. Joining authors like Ian Hacking and Arnold Davidson, I suggest the importance of a ‘style of reasoning’ to the creation of sexual kinds at the end of the 19th century, a kind of reasoning that might be styled as historical. For the invert to become possible (...) as a human kind, the conceptual space for an understanding of inverts as specific kinds needed to be cleared. In France, this was accomplished by conceiving individuals as elaborated historically, as the product of prior generations, and by differentiating them from other kinds of people via notions of heredity and degeneration. The invert was plotted within the meta-récit of French progress (and national degeneration). This logic of ‘historicization’ also entailed the scrutiny of the patient’s past in order to reveal his or her ‘nature’ as pathological. Understanding the conceptualization of inversion as including, in part, a ‘pursuit of memory’ provides a window onto the vexing question of how people come to take up their classifications; that is, how discourses interact with the subjects they purport to describe. Through the ‘pursuit of memory’, persons were encouraged to (re)describe their pasts in terms of the present diagnosis. An essential attribute of the literature on ‘inversion’ was precisely such an historically formed understanding of pathological individuals; an understanding that ushered in the transformation from acts to natures, from individuals to kinds, from sodomites to homosexuals. (shrink)

This essay uses the recently published expanded record of the Queensberry libel trial to revisit the relationship between the 'literary' and 'sexual' dimensions of the Wilde scandal. The defence was guided by an integrated conception of the links between the two that shaped both the public responses and the legal proceedings, including the criminal prosecution. The conflict between moral literalism and aesthetic indeterminacy not only informed the legal determination of sexual guilt but also was inflected by social class in ways (...) that contributed to the construction of male homosexuality and of the 'literary'. (shrink)

Objective Apeiron was founded in 1966 and has developed into one of the oldest and most distinguished journals dedicated to the study of ancient philosophy, ancient science, and, in particular, of problems that concern both fields. Apeiron is committed to publishing high-quality research papers in these areas of ancient Greco-Roman intellectual history; it also welcomes submission of articles dealing with the reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition. The journal appears quarterly. Articles are peer-reviewed on (...) a double-blind basis. Topics ancient philosophy ancient science reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition Article formats Original Articles. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.2 (2000) 175-188 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note 38 Bioethics Resources on the Web * Once described as an "enormous used book store with volumes stacked on shelves and tables and overflowing onto the floor" (Pool, Robert. 1994. Turning an Info-Glut into a Library. Science 266 (7 October): 20-22, p. 20), Internet resources now receive numerous levels of organization, from basic directory listings (...) to elaborate "links" (cross-references to other Internet documents) that flash and glow in the dark. In many ways, the Internet functions as a direct extension of the traditional library. Following linked references across various sites is an electronic version of browsing library stacks, and the serendipitous discoveries made while "surfing the Net" recall the wonders of physically going "book-to-book." Although many of the Internet's best aspects augment library strengths by eliminating physical distance from sources, Net resources pose unique problems for researchers. It is not always clear who is responsible for the content of Web documents, when the document was produced, or how often (if ever) it is updated. Internet resource tools, then, must enable researchers to identify appropriate resources and to evaluate what they find when they get there. Web Research as Taking "Snapshots" Given the Internet's visual nature and fluid content, the process of conducting research on the Web has been likened to taking an informal picture of information on a specific date at a particular time. This metaphor also conveys the "zoom-in" aspect of searching through Web pages by going from general to specific categories. In the first section of this Scope Note, National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL) staff present a snapshot of bioethics resources taken during the spring months of 2000. Entries are divided into the categories of directories, electronic journals, full-text documents, news/current awareness, and teaching resources. In the two subsequent sections, this series of categories is repeated for entries on a specific topic within bioethics-genetics-and again for general search and evaluation tools. Where a Web site may contain pages applicable [End Page 175] to more than one category, multiple entries are made for that site with appropriate information for each category.Much as telecommunication advances have strengthened the relationship of patients and providers as partners, the dynamic nature of the Internet acknowledges that the researcher functions as a librarian whenever accessing the Web. It is our hope that BIOETHICSLINE and the other NRCBL databases not only will enable researchers to search the Web more efficiently, but also will help them to evaluate what they find when they get there. Bioethicsline on the Web: An International Plan in Progress Once only available through libraries, the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), the funding agency for the ongoing development of the BIOETHICS LINE® database from the Kennedy Institute, has provided free Web access to that database of 63,000 citations since September 1998 through Internet Grateful Med. Plans are now underway to eliminate such specialty databases and incorporate all citations into PubMed (for journal articles) or LOCATORplus (for book-like materials and chapters in books). Both of these databases are likewise available at no cost on the Web. In the transition to PubMed and LOCATORplus some features of BIOETHICSLINE that presently are available may be lost. Researchers are encouraged to contact the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature with search requests or for search strategy assistance with either the current or the future system (medethx@georgetown.edu).The inclusion of bioethics citations in PubMed and LOCATORplus will have several advantages. First, unique keywords from the Bioethics Thesaurus will be considered for inclusion in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the indexing vocabulary for PubMed and LOCATORplus, thereby enhancing retrieval of relevant clinical literature by offering more precise terminology covering ethical issues. Second, it will be easier to identify foreign-language materials, which are not currently included in the scope of BIOETHICSLINE. Third, the updating schedule will become more frequent. On the other hand, there may be some loss of searching precision because certain specialized features... (shrink)

Discover the truth about sex in the city (and the country). Mapping Desire explores the places and spaces of sexuality from body to community, from the "cottage" to the Barrio, from Boston to Jakarta, from home to cyberspace. Mapping Desire is the first book to explore sexualities from a geographical perspective. The nature of place and notions of space are of increasing centrality to cultural and social theory. Mapping Desires presents the rich and diverse world of contemporary sexuality, exploring how (...) the heterosexed body has been appropriated and resisted on the individual, community and city scales. Editors David Bell and Gill Valentine have brought together contributors with a wealth of approaches to ways in which the spaces of sex and the sexes of space are being mapped out across contemporary culture. Among the many sexual geographies covered are: Lesbians at home and on the streets; gay men on fantasy islands; bisexual identities; The heterosexualization of the workplace; bachelor farmers and spinsters; surveillance and sexuality; prostitution; queer politics; sexual citizenship, and the transformation of intimacy. The book is divided into four sections: cartographies/identities; sexualized spaces: global/local; sexualized spaces: local/global; sites of resistance. Each section is separately introduced. Beyond the bibliography, an annotated guide to further reading is also provided to help the reader map their own way through the literature. Mapping Desire will be a valuable and accessible travelogue of information for anyone interested in social, cultural and political geography, lesbian and gay studies, cultural studies, or simply those who want to find out more about the sexual landscape of contemporary society. Contents: Part I: Cartographies/Identities; Resolving Riddles: The Sexed Body, Julia Cream ; Locating Bisexual Identities: Discourses of Bisexuality and Contemporary Feminist Theory, Clare Hemmings; Of Moffies, Kaffiers and Perverts: Male Homosexuality and the Discourse of Moral Order in the Apartheid State, Glen Elder; Femme on the Streets, Butch in the Sheets (a Play on Whores), Alison Murray; Body Work: The Performance of Gendered and (Hetero)Sexualized Identities in City Workplaces, Linda McDowell; Part II: Sexualized Spaces: Global/Local; Whenever I Lay My Girlfriend That's My Home: The Performance and Surveillance of Lesbian Identities in Domestic Environments, Lynda Johnston and Gill Valentine; The Lesbian Flaneur, Sally Munt; Fantasy Islands: Popular Topographies of Marooned Masculinities, Gregory Woods; Sexuality and Urban Space: A Framework for Analysis, Lawrence Knopp; Part III: Sexualized Spaces: Local/Global; "And She Told Two Friends...": Lesbians Creating Urban Social Space, Tamar Rothenberg; Trading Places: Consumption, Sexuality and the Production of Queer Space, Jon Binnie; Bachelor Farmers and Spinsters: Gay and Lesbian Identities and Communities in Rural North Dakota, Jerry Lee Kramer; (Re)Constructing a Spanish Redlight District: Prostitution, Space and Power, Angie Hart; Part IV: Sites of Resistance; "Surveilliant Gays": HIV, Space and the Construction of Identities, David Woodhead; Sex, Scale and the "New Urban Politics": HIV-Prevention Strategies from Yaletown, Vancouver, Michael Brown; "Boom, Bye, Bye": Jamaican Ragga and Gay Resistance, Tracey Skelton; The Diversity of Queer Politics and the Redefinition of Sexual Identity and Community in Urban Space, Tim Davis; Perverse Dynamics, Sexual Citizenship and the Transformation of Intimacy, David Bell; Guide to Further Reading; Bibliography. (shrink)

Prolepses: Queer/early/modern -- Always already queer (French) theory -- Undoing the histories of homosexuality -- Queer nation : early/modern France -- Queer spectrality.

The author considers the role of male and female homosexuality in society and presents a range of theories about the causes of homosexuality as well as diverse theories about free will and the extent to which it influences sexual orientation.

This is a new edition of "A Problem in Greek Ethics," originally published in London in 1901 for "private circulation." Part of the project Immortal Literature Series of classic literature, this is a new edition of the classic work published in 1901-not a facsimile reprint. Obvious typographical errors have been carefully corrected and the entire text has been reset and redesigned by Pen House Editions to enhance readability, while respecting the original edition."A Problem in Greek Ethics" is an (...) account of sexuality between men in all its forms, with Greek culture as a backdrop. Perhaps the best description of "A Problem in Greek Ethics" is this one in "Queer Religion" (Praeger, 2012, edited by Donald L. Boisvert and Jay Emerson Johnson, pp. 180-181): "Published at the turn of the century, 'A Problem in Greek Ethics' is a systematic and well-documented exposition of the role of homosexuality in the different historical periods of ancient Greek society. Throughout most of his work, Symonds prefers to use the term 'paiderastia' to 'homosexuality,' the latter a term he only uses in rare instances. Nevertheless, 'paiderastia,' in Symonds's work, amounts to a broad concept of homosexuality rather than to our current concept of pederasty. Whitman and his work are never mentioned by Symonds in 'A Problem in Greek Ethics,' but the conceptual connection had already been made explicit in Walt Whitman: 'A Study' eight years earlier. In the introductory lines to 'A Problem in Greek Ethics,' the reader is alerted that ancient Greece offers a unique example in history of 'a great and highly developed race not only tolerating homosexual passions, but deeming them of spiritual value, and attempting to use them for the benefit of society.' According to Symonds, while homosexual relations were not prominent in the so-called heroic age of Greece, it was nevertheless the love of Achilles for Patroclus, as narrated by Homer, that conferred in a later age of Greek history an almost religious sanction to the martial form of paiderastia. This episode in the Iliad inspired in later generations an ideal of manly love, which he describes as 'a powerful and masculine emotion, in which effeminacy had no part, and which by no means excluded the ordinary sexual feelings.' To which he adds that the tie created by these relationships was 'both more spiritual and more energetic [than] that which bound man to woman.' While Homer knew not about homosexuality, very early in Greek history paiderastia became a national institution giving rise, according to Symonds, to a distinction between a noble, spiritual, form of masculine passion, which he calls "heroic love," and a base and sensual one, which he identifies as 'vulgar love.'"About the Author: John Addington Symonds was born in Bristol, England, in 1840. He was an English poet, an author of several works, and a literary critic. In 1873 he wrote "A Problem in Greek Ethics," which discussed homosexuality between men. He printed ten copies in 1883, before effectively publishing the book in 1901. He was also known for his work on the Renaissance, as well as for his translations and biographies. He wrote "Our Life in the Swiss Highlands" (1891), biographies of Philip Sidney (1886), Ben Jonson (1886) and Michelangelo (1893), several volumes of poetry and essays, and a translation of the "Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini" (1887). John Addington Symonds died in Rome in 1893. In 1896, Havelock Ellis published, in German, prepared with the collaboration of Dr. Hans Kurella, "Das konträre Geschlechtsgefühl" (Leipzig, by Georg H. Wigand's Verlag), later revised and published by Ellis as "Sexual Inversion"-the first medical text in English about homosexuality, which he had co-authored with Symonds, and which would become a part of Ellis's six-volume "Studies in the Psychology of Sex.". (shrink)

Professor Mark A. Yarhouse proposes an ‘identity synthesis’ model of sexual modification therapy for homosexuals. This model is meant primarily to target the process by which one’s sexual identity is synthesized, rather than the changing of sexual orientation itself. I highlight some of the advantages of Yarhouse’s model along with some of its potential pitfalls. My primary point of departure with Yarhouse concerns how one ought to direct those self-identified homosexual clients who fall within our clinical sphere of influence and (...) who, in the end, contrary to our better judgment, decide that they would like to pursue a course of “homosexualization.” Based on the “autonomy”-emphasizing aspects of the identity synthesis model, it appears that Yarhouse is willing to sanction the referral of certain clients to “therapists” who are willing to facilitate these clients’ homosexualization. I do not believe that Christians involved in the care of homosexuals can licitly participate in such referrals. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that homosexuality is abnormal and hence undesirable—not because it is immoral or sinful, or because it weakens society or hampers evolutionary development, but for a purely mechanical reason. It is a misuse of bodily parts. Clear empirical sense attaches to the idea of the use of such bodily parts as genitals, the idea that they are for something, and consequently to the idea of their misuse. I argue on grounds involving natural selection that misuse (...) of bodily parts can with high probability be connected to unhappiness. I regard these matters as prolegomena to such policy issues as the rights of homosexuals, the rights of those desiring not to associate with homosexuals, and legislation concerning homosexuality, issues which I shall not discuss systematically here. However, I do in the last section draw a seemingly evident corollary from my view that homosexuality is abnormal and likely to lead to unhappiness. (shrink)

In Homos, he studies the historical, political, and philosophical grounds for the current distrust, within the gay community, of self-identifying moves, for the ...

We recently synthesized and reinterpreted published studies to advance an epigenetic model for the development of homosexuality (HS). The model is based on epigenetic marks laid down in response to the XX vs. XY karyotype in embryonic stem cells. These marks boost sensitivity to testosterone in XY fetuses and lower it in XX fetuses, thereby canalizing sexual development. Our model predicts that a subset of these canalizing epigenetic marks stochastically carry over across generations and lead to mosaicism for sexual (...) development in opposite‐sex offspring – the homosexual phenotype being one such outcome. Here, we begin by outlining why HS has been under‐appreciated as a commonplace phenomenon in nature, and how this trend is currently being reversed in the field of neurobiology. We next briefly describe our epigenetic model of HS, develop a set of predictions, and describe how epigenetic profiles of human stem cells can provide for a strong test of the model. (shrink)

I argue on utilitarian grounds that while traditional constraints on heterosexual activity, including the prohibition of pre-marital sex and divorce may be justified by appeal to purely secular principles, no comparable prohibitions are justified as regards homosexual activity. Homosexuality is in this respect.

In ‘Aeon’ magazine, 2 August 2017, Professor Paul Russell maintains that identities such as race, gender and sexual orientation have equal ethical standing because they cannot be discarded and they are not constituted by beliefs, values or practices. We should, he says, resist attempts to present those who identify as gay as making a choice and affirming certain values and practices that they are capable of shedding. However, such identities can be discarded and they are in part constituted by beliefs, (...) values or practices. Russell’s defence of homosexual equality, because it focuses on the inclination to homosexuality, is pointless and useless. A proper defence of homosexual equality focuses on homosexual lifestyles and argues that the choice of such lifestyles is not wrong. Whether people who choose homosexual lifestyles do so because of a natural and unchangeable inclination, or whether environment or choice plays a part in bringing about that inclination, is an interesting question for science but of no concern for politics. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, EarlyView. -/- For the longest time, it has been generally held and widely acknowledged that Thomas Aquinas thought homosexual activity to be morally wrong. In recent years, this common interpretation has come under challenge by none other than the President of the Leonine Commission, the Dominican Adriano Oliva. In a recent book, Loves: The Church, the Remarried Divorced, and Homosexual Couples (in French Amours: L’Église, les divorcés remariés, les couples homosexuels), Oliva argues that Thomas Aquinas would have (...) supported homosexual practices for homosexual persons, or at least that an accurate application of Thomistic principles entails that homosexual acts are morally good. Is this just wishful thinking on Oliva’s part or does his argument have some merit? In order to answer that question, I will proceed in three parts: first, I will reveal numerous texts Oliva failed to take into account; second, I will explicate Oliva’s hermeneutic and the principal textual support he gives for his position; third, I will examine whether Aquinas would have changed his views on the morality of homosexual activity in light of modern advances in our understanding of the etiology and unchangeability of homosexuality. It is concluded that Oliva's view is a gross misinterpretation of the texts. (shrink)

During the late eighteenth century the Bible underwent a shift in interpretation so radical as to make it virtually a different book from what it had been a hundred years earlier. Even as its text was being revealed as neither stable nor original, the new notion of the Bible as a cultural artefact became a paradigm for all literature. In Origins of Narrative one of the world's leading scholars in biblical interpretation, criticism and theory describes how, while formal religion (...) declined, the prestige of the Bible as a literary and aesthetic model rose to new heights: not merely was English, German and French Romanticism steeped in biblical references of a new kind, but hermeneutics and, increasingly, theories of literature and criticism were biblically derived. Professor Prickett reveals how the Romantic Bible became simultaneously a novel-like narrative work, an on-going site of re-interpretation, and an all-embracing literary form giving meaning to all other writing. (shrink)

I am going to consider some common and, for the most part, fairly unreflective reasons for thinking that homosexuality is a bad thing and, therefore, something that should be extirpated, if that is possible, or suppressed, by, most obviously, legal prohibition or, falling short of that, by moral or social pressure. These reasons are five in number: homosexuality is held to be unnatural, abnormal, a perversion, morally wrong or sinful and aesthetically repellent or disgusting. The first three of (...) these unfavourable characterisations of homosexuality apply to it primarily as an orientation, a disposition to engage in homosexual activity, whether the disposition is manifested or not. The other two, the moral and aesthetic ones so far as most of their proponents are concerned, apply only to homosexuality, as manifested in actual conduct. The desire to sin, after all, is a necessary condition of virtue. There is no merit in not doing things one has no desire to do. Similarly the desire to do something disgusting is hardly, in itself, disgusting. (shrink)

In this book, Chris Meyers takes the reader on a careful, rational, sustained criticism of arguments about the immorality of homosexuality. Meyers refutes anti-gay arguments by showing that they are based on unreasonable or demonstrably false ideas about the nature of morality.

This paper considers the question of whether the explanation of homosexual orientation offered by Sigmund Freud qualifies as a genuine explanation, judged by the criteria of the social sciences. It is argued that the explanation, namely that homosexual orientation is a function of atypical parental influences, is indeed an explanation of the kind found in the social sciences. Nevertheless, it is concluded that to date Freud's hypotheses about homosexuality are no more than unproven speculations. Also considered is the question (...) of whether the very topic of homosexuality falls or ought to fall within the domain of medical inquiry. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

It is difficult to overstate music's persistent and uneasy relationship with homosexuality in Western society. Associated with femininity for centuries, particularly in North America, participation in music has been believed to emasculate and thus homosexualize men and boys. The linking of music to women and emotion (as opposed to men and reason) contributes to the conflation of misogyny and homophobia in North American society generally and music and music education particularly. One effect of music's conflicted relationship with and to (...) homosexuality for lesbians and gay men is to "disappear" them in both professions. As a function of disappeared positionalities, subject positions of homosexualities and potentialities of creating lives worth living are also disappeared. I explore ontological effects of disappeared in the world and music and music education, and reconceptualize "disappeared" in terms of Jacques Derrida's concept of "under erasure"—sous rature—in ways that may signal other ontological potentialities. (shrink)

Many Protestant denominations have or recently had policies that prohibit “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from being ordained. By only prohibiting “practicing” homosexuals, proponents of these policies claim that they do not discriminate against homosexuals as a group since, technically, a homosexual can still be ordained as long as she is “non-practicing.” In other words, a condemnation of homosexual practice is not the same as a condemnation of homosexual persons. I argue that this is not the case; the rhetoric of homosexual practice (...) does, in fact, amount to a condemnation of gays and lesbians. It does so by conflating the two things it claims to keep separate—homosexual conduct and homosexual identity. I demonstrate this conflation by analyzing the history of this rhetoric and how it has been adjudicated in church court decisions from the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA). (shrink)

The present research paper approaches homosexuality from a Foucauldian perspective. Foucault's place and standing in a postmodern historical and cultural context will be explained. The paper outlines how homosexuality has been historically constructed and socially constituted. How sexuality became understood as a particular form of discourse, that is as a science, will be explored particularly with regard to the strategic use of confession as a producer of knowledge. I will present how homosexuality, as a medicalized, ontological identity (...) was implanted in bodies and an entire pathological population was created. To reverse an excessive medicalized discourse of homosexuality, Foucault's prescription of moving to the care of self and predicating sexuality on the pleasure of bodies as opposed to scientific or clinical ideology will be discussed. Such critical analysis facilitates new imaginative spaces that can enable educators to engage in meaningful and informed dialogue around the various discourses surrounding homosexuality in a postmodern historical and cultural context. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Homosexuality and American Psychiatry. By Ronald Bayer.

This chapter contains sections titled: Art and Community The rhetoric of environmental literature Ethical wholeness and living in place.

In the face of the recent backlashes against homosexual persons in Africa, on the ground that the phenomenon is un-African and/or threat to procreation and marital values, it is pertinent to review the discourse in the light of how ancient Africans perceived the reality. This is imperative given the lack of consensus on the part of scientists to disinter a conclusive finding on what causes homosexual behaviours among humans. In this research, I employ traditional Yorùbá philosophy to provide a plausible (...) justification for homosexuality among the people. In the face of this justification via Yorùbá folklore, I find that there is no documented evidence among the ancient Yorùbá that is suggestive of discrimination and stigmatization of homosexuals and inter-sex persons. As homosexual persons were respected but not criminalized, this study recommends the regurgitation of this outlook in the contemporaneous dealings with homosexual persons, beginning with the repealing of the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act of 2014 in Nigeria, which is inconsistent with African values and outlooks on the subject. (shrink)

In recent years, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, and Spain have recognized marriages between people of the same sex. Several other countries recognize civil unions with similar legal effect. An even wider range of countries have laws against discrimination on the basis of a person’s sexual orientation, in areas like housing and employment. Yet in the world’s largest democracy, India, sex between two men remains a crime punishable, according to statute, by imprisonment for life.

Wie nah sind sich Literatur und Philosophie? Die beiden Disziplinen stehen für ganz unterschiedliche Formen der Welterkenntnis und der Erkenntnisvermittlung. Doch ohne das Verständnis des jeweils anderen Bereiches kommen die literaturwissenschaftliche und die philosophische Analyse schnell an ihre Grenzen. Dass es zahlreiche Berührungspunkte zwischen Literatur und Philosophie gibt, zeigt dieses Handbuch. In 16 ausführlichen Kapiteln schafft es einen Überblick über Problemkonstellationen, bei denen die Trennung beider Fachgebiete relativiert oder aufgehoben ist.

When it comes to humans, ‘homosexuality’ refers to a variety of characteristics, ranging from sexual behaviours, desires, preferences, and orientations, to sexual identities. The question driving this paper is whether, and to what extent, it is justified to also ascribe such characteristics to nonhuman animals. Scientific opinions are divided on this issue, ranging from militantly positive to cautiously positive to markedly negative, with many in between suggesting we should at least change the vocabulary.

Arthur Danto's philosophical writing is replete with literary references. Philosophy is purely a conceptual enterprise, aimed at solving problems about the natures of things precisely where no empirical information is available to settle what they are. Danto chose the philosophy of literature, and in particular the relations between literature and philosophy, as the topic of his 1983 APA Presidential Address. Danto describes “the bottom‐line view of philosophy” that undertakes to develop only via impersonal theses and arguments, and that (...) requires “the suppression of voice” as “abstract, distorted, and surrealistic” in being too severed from our actual experiences as historical and embodied beings. Philosophy, at least as a matter of its defining ambitions and at the highest reach of its achievements, is, in Danto's perception, essentially written for the sake of transfiguration; its very life is lost when its texts are “flattened into papers”. (shrink)

Historically, the Christian church was united in firm opposition to both homosexuality and contraception. Today most evangelical Christians continue to oppose the former but have embraced the latter. This paper argues that there is a clear tension between these views, especially when it comes to the evangelical use of natural law–type reasoning. The conclusion of this paper is that Christians who view homosexual activity as immoral must also view artificial contraception in the same light. They are wrong for the (...) same reason: they both misuse the sexual organs by directing sexual activity away from procreative unity. (shrink)

Schopenhauer wrote candidly about sex at a time when almost nobody did. He saw consideration of it as the means of reproduction whereby human beings come into existence as inescapable for metaphysics, indeed for serious thinking. He conjectured that homosexual impulses were implanted by nature in adolescent and elderly males because, although they have sexual urges and can procreate, it is undesirable that they should do so, and therefore the urge is diverted. This, he thinks, is why homosexual activity has (...) been widespread in all known societies. The manner in which he writes about it suggests that he had felt homosexual impulses himself but had not given way to them. (shrink)