Homosexuality (Contemporary Issues)
This, the latest in Prometheus's Contemporary Issues series, provides a balanced approach to a provocative topic through journalistic articles and original documents. Addressing philosophy, psychology/science, law, the military, and religion, these previously published writings come from sources as diverse as the New York Times and Parameters: U.S. Army College Quarterly and, predictably, represent an equally wide range of thinking. While sections on the philosophy and psychology of homosexuality are all too brief, those on the legal and religious issues have great breadth. Any citizen should read the Supreme Court's Bowers v. Hardwick decision upholding Georgia's sodomy laws and Commonwealth v. Wasson, in which Kentucky's state supreme court found that its Constitution granted more protection than the federal Constitution. On the religious front, both Margaret Susan Thompson and Paul Duke offer moving testimonies to some Catholics' accommodation of homosexuality, while a closeted rabbi makes a pseudonymous plea for greater understanding from Orthodox Judaism. Even hard science can be co-opted by politics with pro/opponents of homosexuality putting their own spin on the emerging work of Simon Levay on the hypothalamus as the site of male-typical sexual behavior and Dean Hamer on a chromosomal basis for homosexuality. As embryonic as the studies may be, readers will benefit from the original scholarship as opposed to processed reportage. Aside from the absence of writing from the gay media itself, this is an excellent reference book for those that wish to explore opposing points of view; it is timely, considered, and generally representative.Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.