L a t e i n t h e s u m m e r o f 1972 , the Adult World Bookstore opened its doors in the neighborhood of Redford, a residential community located in northwest Detroit. The bookstore—and the pornographic material it housed—quickly caught the attention of Pastor James O. Banks of the Redford Presbyterian Church, who on September 17 used his weekly sermon to discuss the Adult World. In his remarks the pastor condemned the bookstore, bemoaning what its opening symbolized both for the Redford neighborhood and more broadly for Christian values. He sought to draw distinctions between normative sexuality (practiced within the bounds of heterosexual marriage) and commercial sex as represented by the goods on offer at the Adult World: “It is cheap. It is raw sex. It is crude. It is degrading. It is sex separated from sexuality. It is sex pictures and symbols being sold. It is wrong. It represents a way of life in total contradiction to the Christian.” The pastor used his sermon to reiterate the importance of Christian norms on sex, norms that had been central to antiporn politics for decades. Banks ended his speech by calling on his congregation to reject apathy and take action against the bookstore. And take action they did. Letters protesting the Adult World soon began arriving in the mailboxes of major city officials. What started as a slow stream of letters soon became a flood, with not only church members but also many neighborhood residents and organizations writing to express their consternation. Their letters, however, quite often emphasized concerns
1972年12月，在底特律西北部的居民区雷德福(Redford)附近，成人世界书店(Adult World Bookstore)开张了。这家书店和里面的色情材料很快引起了雷德福长老会牧师詹姆斯o班克斯的注意，他在9月17日的每周布道中讨论了成人世界。牧师在讲话中谴责了这家书店，哀叹它的开业对雷德福社区乃至更广泛意义上的基督教价值观的象征意义。他试图区分规范性的性行为(在异性婚姻的范围内进行)和以成人世界提供的商品为代表的商业性行为:“它很便宜。这是原始的性爱。它很粗糙。这是可耻的。这是性与性的分离。卖的是色情图片和色情符号。这是错误的。它代表了一种与基督教完全矛盾的生活方式。”牧师在布道中重申了基督教性规范的重要性，这些规范几十年来一直是反色情政治的核心。班克斯在演讲结束时呼吁他的会众拒绝冷漠，采取行动反对这家书店。他们确实采取了行动。抗议成人世界的信件很快就开始寄到主要城市官员的邮箱里。一开始只是缓慢的信件流，很快就变成了洪水，不仅是教会成员，还有许多社区居民和组织都写信来表达他们的惊愕。然而，他们的信件往往强调了他们的担忧
{"title":"The Blight of Indecency: Antiporn Politics and the Urban Crisis in Early 1970s Detroit","authors":"Ben Strassfeld","doi":"10.7560/JHS27304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/JHS27304","url":null,"abstract":"L a t e i n t h e s u m m e r o f 1972 , the Adult World Bookstore opened its doors in the neighborhood of Redford, a residential community located in northwest Detroit. The bookstore—and the pornographic material it housed—quickly caught the attention of Pastor James O. Banks of the Redford Presbyterian Church, who on September 17 used his weekly sermon to discuss the Adult World. In his remarks the pastor condemned the bookstore, bemoaning what its opening symbolized both for the Redford neighborhood and more broadly for Christian values. He sought to draw distinctions between normative sexuality (practiced within the bounds of heterosexual marriage) and commercial sex as represented by the goods on offer at the Adult World: “It is cheap. It is raw sex. It is crude. It is degrading. It is sex separated from sexuality. It is sex pictures and symbols being sold. It is wrong. It represents a way of life in total contradiction to the Christian.” The pastor used his sermon to reiterate the importance of Christian norms on sex, norms that had been central to antiporn politics for decades. Banks ended his speech by calling on his congregation to reject apathy and take action against the bookstore. And take action they did. Letters protesting the Adult World soon began arriving in the mailboxes of major city officials. What started as a slow stream of letters soon became a flood, with not only church members but also many neighborhood residents and organizations writing to express their consternation. Their letters, however, quite often emphasized concerns","PeriodicalId":45704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Sexuality","volume":"27 1","pages":"420 - 441"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46650016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The notion that sexuality in the Greek and Roman periods was predicated on a social-sexual hierarchy that casts relationships in the binary terms of active/passive and penetrator/penetrated has been both influential and controversial over the last 30 years. Both the articulation of this hierarchy and its critique have been haunted by various gendered and identitarian investments, leading to several theoretical and historical impasses. This essay offers up a second century Christian text, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, as an intervention into this debate and the impasses it produced -that is, as an inquiry into the continuing predominance of penetrative models for relationality in contemporary theory, as well as the near-total subsuming of ancient erotic relations under the rubric of gender. Indeed I read the Acts of Paul and Thecla as an archive of erotic experiences that don’t fit comfortably within penetrative and active/passive frameworks, and do so with gender working as a language inflecting (but not determinative of) erotic life. I thus hope to widen our aperture for ancient sexuality, as well as for contemporary theories of sexuality that imagine penetrative wounding as primary models for sex and relational encounters at large.
{"title":"Penetration and Its Discontents: Greco-Roman Sexuality, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and Theorizing Eros without the Wound","authors":"Maia Kotrosits","doi":"10.7560/JHS27301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/JHS27301","url":null,"abstract":"The notion that sexuality in the Greek and Roman periods was predicated on a social-sexual hierarchy that casts relationships in the binary terms of active/passive and penetrator/penetrated has been both influential and controversial over the last 30 years. Both the articulation of this hierarchy and its critique have been haunted by various gendered and identitarian investments, leading to several theoretical and historical impasses. This essay offers up a second century Christian text, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, as an intervention into this debate and the impasses it produced -that is, as an inquiry into the continuing predominance of penetrative models for relationality in contemporary theory, as well as the near-total subsuming of ancient erotic relations under the rubric of gender. Indeed I read the Acts of Paul and Thecla as an archive of erotic experiences that don’t fit comfortably within penetrative and active/passive frameworks, and do so with gender working as a language inflecting (but not determinative of) erotic life. I thus hope to widen our aperture for ancient sexuality, as well as for contemporary theories of sexuality that imagine penetrative wounding as primary models for sex and relational encounters at large.","PeriodicalId":45704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Sexuality","volume":"27 1","pages":"343 - 366"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41947487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
O n n e w Y e a r ’ s e v e i n 1938 , a national black newspaper, the Baltimore Afro-American, announced that famed Washington, DC, black female impersonator Alden Garrison had died. He was only thirty years old. Known for his appearances in nightclubs and stage performances in Baltimore, Atlantic City, and New York, Garrison was considered to be one of the most successful female impersonators on the Eastern Seaboard. Despite Garrison’s fame, the Afro-American lamented that there would be “No Tears for Alden,” as he died alone and penniless in Gallinger Hospital in Washington, DC. In fact, the paper disclosed that just a few “intimate friends” attended his funeral service. Nonetheless, a procession of curiosity seekers paraded by the casket prior to his last rites, hoping to get a glimpse of the performer who was largely known through coverage in the AfroAmerican. The popularity of female impersonators and gay men, often identified as the “pansy craze” of the interwar period, helps to explain the interest in Garrison’s body despite the fact that he had fallen into obscurity by the time of his death. Recently released from an Arlington, Virginia, jail, Garrison had voluntarily committed himself to Gallinger for malnutrition and chills a short time before his death. On its face, the story of Garrison’s death at such a young age is tragic but hardly surprising. Garrison was just one of many people who prematurely succumbed to death that year and every year. Of course, Garrison’s previous fame as a performer made his death worthy of attention. All three of the largest and most popular national black newspapers, the Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, and the AfroAmerican, covered Garrison’s death, attesting to his prominence in the
{"title":"“No Tears for Alden”: Black Female Impersonators as “Outsiders Within” in the Baltimore Afro-American","authors":"Kim Gallon","doi":"10.7560/JHS27302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/JHS27302","url":null,"abstract":"O n n e w Y e a r ’ s e v e i n 1938 , a national black newspaper, the Baltimore Afro-American, announced that famed Washington, DC, black female impersonator Alden Garrison had died. He was only thirty years old. Known for his appearances in nightclubs and stage performances in Baltimore, Atlantic City, and New York, Garrison was considered to be one of the most successful female impersonators on the Eastern Seaboard. Despite Garrison’s fame, the Afro-American lamented that there would be “No Tears for Alden,” as he died alone and penniless in Gallinger Hospital in Washington, DC. In fact, the paper disclosed that just a few “intimate friends” attended his funeral service. Nonetheless, a procession of curiosity seekers paraded by the casket prior to his last rites, hoping to get a glimpse of the performer who was largely known through coverage in the AfroAmerican. The popularity of female impersonators and gay men, often identified as the “pansy craze” of the interwar period, helps to explain the interest in Garrison’s body despite the fact that he had fallen into obscurity by the time of his death. Recently released from an Arlington, Virginia, jail, Garrison had voluntarily committed himself to Gallinger for malnutrition and chills a short time before his death. On its face, the story of Garrison’s death at such a young age is tragic but hardly surprising. Garrison was just one of many people who prematurely succumbed to death that year and every year. Of course, Garrison’s previous fame as a performer made his death worthy of attention. All three of the largest and most popular national black newspapers, the Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, and the AfroAmerican, covered Garrison’s death, attesting to his prominence in the","PeriodicalId":45704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Sexuality","volume":"27 1","pages":"367 - 394"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48087841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
P h o t o g r a P h i c e v i d e n c e P l a y e d an increasingly important role in the efforts of early twentieth-century sexual scientists to establish their discipline as what Michel Foucault describes as “legitimate knowledge.” Since the late nineteenth century, pioneers in the field of sexology, such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing in Vienna, Havelock Ellis in Britain, and Magnus Hirschfeld in Germany, had relied heavily on the autobiographical statements of patients and other informants in their efforts to uncover the mysteries of human sexual life, publishing these as case histories in support of newly forged classifications of what they at first described as sexual “pathologies” and “perversions.” But the almost exclusive reliance on subjective textual evidence began to change when technological developments in photography and its mass reproduction combined with an expanding patient base in ways that enabled sexologists to embrace this seemingly more empirical form of evidence. Historians have shown that from the mid-nineteenth century onward scientists had started turning to photography as a more tangible, “scientific” form of evidence that, in its mechanical objectivity, resonated with society’s abiding concern with the “Truth.” This article
P h o t o g r a P h i c e v i d e n c e P l a y e d在20世纪初性科学家努力建立米歇尔·福柯所说的“合法知识”的过程中发挥着越来越重要的作用。自19世纪末以来，性学领域的先驱，如维也纳的Richard von Krafft Ebing、英国的Havelock Ellis，以及德国的马格努斯·赫希菲尔德（Magnus Hirschfeld），在努力揭开人类性生活的奥秘时，他们在很大程度上依赖患者和其他线人的自传体陈述，并将其作为案例历史出版，以支持他们最初所描述的性“病理”和“变态”的新分类。“但是，当摄影及其大规模复制的技术发展与不断扩大的患者基础相结合，使性学家能够接受这种看似更具经验的证据形式时，对主观文本证据的几乎完全依赖开始改变。历史学家已经表明，从19世纪中期开始，科学家们开始将摄影作为一种更有形、更“科学”的证据形式，以其机械的客观性，与社会对“真相”的持久关注产生了共鸣
{"title":"Sexology’s Photographic Turn: Visualizing Trans Identity in Interwar Germany","authors":"Katie Sutton","doi":"10.7560/JHS27305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/JHS27305","url":null,"abstract":"P h o t o g r a P h i c e v i d e n c e P l a y e d an increasingly important role in the efforts of early twentieth-century sexual scientists to establish their discipline as what Michel Foucault describes as “legitimate knowledge.” Since the late nineteenth century, pioneers in the field of sexology, such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing in Vienna, Havelock Ellis in Britain, and Magnus Hirschfeld in Germany, had relied heavily on the autobiographical statements of patients and other informants in their efforts to uncover the mysteries of human sexual life, publishing these as case histories in support of newly forged classifications of what they at first described as sexual “pathologies” and “perversions.” But the almost exclusive reliance on subjective textual evidence began to change when technological developments in photography and its mass reproduction combined with an expanding patient base in ways that enabled sexologists to embrace this seemingly more empirical form of evidence. Historians have shown that from the mid-nineteenth century onward scientists had started turning to photography as a more tangible, “scientific” form of evidence that, in its mechanical objectivity, resonated with society’s abiding concern with the “Truth.” This article","PeriodicalId":45704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Sexuality","volume":"27 1","pages":"442 - 479"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47174303","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Reviews","authors":"","doi":"10.7560/jhs27306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/jhs27306","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Sexuality","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45188366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A u s t r A l i A ’ s r o y A l C o m m i s s i o n on Human Relationships was an initiative of the progressive and social democratic Whitlam Labor government. Instituted in 1974 with the unusually broad terms of reference to investigate “the family, social, educational, legal and sexual aspects of male and female relationships,” it was the first inquiry into such a topic in the world. The three commissioners (Justice Elizabeth Evatt, journalist Anne Deveson, and Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane Felix Arnott) delivered their final report in November 1977 after taking evidence from hundreds of both expert and ordinary Australians on a tremendously diverse array of aspects of intimate life. Framed as a response to social, cultural, and technological change and conducted in the hope of a “better understanding of Australian society and the challenges it is facing,” the commission’s findings offered a wide-ranging analysis of Australian private lives. It made more than five hundred recommendations on a huge array of topics, including sex education, parenting, gender roles, domestic violence, contraception, adoption, and child abuse. Thirteen of these recommendations related to homosexuality. That the report addressed homosexuality at all was testament to the tenacity of gay and lesbian activists who had worked to place gay and lesbian issues on the commission’s agenda through their testimonies and submissions. The commission’s inclusion of gay and lesbian experi-
{"title":"\"These Are Just a Few Examples of Our Daily Oppressions\": Speaking and Listening to Homosexuality in Australia's Royal Commission on Human Relationships, 1974–1977","authors":"Michelle Arrow","doi":"10.7560/JHS27202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/JHS27202","url":null,"abstract":"A u s t r A l i A ’ s r o y A l C o m m i s s i o n on Human Relationships was an initiative of the progressive and social democratic Whitlam Labor government. Instituted in 1974 with the unusually broad terms of reference to investigate “the family, social, educational, legal and sexual aspects of male and female relationships,” it was the first inquiry into such a topic in the world. The three commissioners (Justice Elizabeth Evatt, journalist Anne Deveson, and Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane Felix Arnott) delivered their final report in November 1977 after taking evidence from hundreds of both expert and ordinary Australians on a tremendously diverse array of aspects of intimate life. Framed as a response to social, cultural, and technological change and conducted in the hope of a “better understanding of Australian society and the challenges it is facing,” the commission’s findings offered a wide-ranging analysis of Australian private lives. It made more than five hundred recommendations on a huge array of topics, including sex education, parenting, gender roles, domestic violence, contraception, adoption, and child abuse. Thirteen of these recommendations related to homosexuality. That the report addressed homosexuality at all was testament to the tenacity of gay and lesbian activists who had worked to place gay and lesbian issues on the commission’s agenda through their testimonies and submissions. The commission’s inclusion of gay and lesbian experi-","PeriodicalId":45704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Sexuality","volume":"27 1","pages":"234 - 263"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43038267","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sin City North: Sex, Drugs, and Citizenship in the Detroit-Windsor Borderland by Holly M. Karibo (review)","authors":"Yukari Takai","doi":"10.1353/mhr.2016.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mhr.2016.0016","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Sexuality","volume":"27 1","pages":"329 - 330"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46782925","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Zorba the Buddha: Sex, Spirituality, and Capitalism in the Global Osho Movement by Hugh B. Urban (review)","authors":"Thomas A. Forsthoefel","doi":"10.5860/choice.197301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.197301","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Sexuality","volume":"27 1","pages":"335 - 337"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46571649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
I n 1972 t h e B r o o k l y n B a s e d lesbian feminist periodical Echo of Sappho profiled Sandy and June, a white butch and femme couple, on the occasion of their recent wedding ceremony. Sandy and June were one among hundreds of same-sex couples who had exchanged vows at Father Robert Mary Clement’s Church of the Beloved Disciple, which opened in 1970 to cater to the spiritual needs of lesbians and gays. When asked how they felt about their wedding “in relationship to the women’s movement,” Sandy and June did not respond directly, describing instead what their marriage meant to them: it was “a holy union and very beautiful,” they said. “This church makes you feel as normal as anyone could be.” Sandy and June’s embrace of normal seems to anticipate the queer Left critique of the marriage equality movement that dominated American lesbian and gay politics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Where once one’s outsider status provided a perch from which to critique how capitalism and liberal democratic states worked hand in hand to privatize sexuality and to advocate for collectivist responses to social inequalities and injustices, Lisa Duggan argues, the modern marriage equality movement “upholds, sustains, and seeks inclusion within . . . heterosexist institutions . . . while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption.” June and Sandy’s seeming inability to draw a connection
1972年，B r o k l y n B a s e d女同性恋女权主义期刊《萨福回声》在他们最近的婚礼上介绍了Sandy和June，一对白人男女伴侣。Sandy和June是在Robert Mary Clement神父的宠儿门徒教堂交换誓言的数百对同性伴侣之一，该教堂于1970年开业，旨在满足男女同性恋的精神需求。当被问及他们对“与妇女运动有关”的婚礼有何感受时，Sandy和June没有直接回应，而是描述了他们的婚姻对他们意味着什么：他们说，这是“神圣的结合，非常美丽”。“这座教堂让你感觉和任何人一样正常。”桑迪和琼对正常的拥抱似乎预示着酷儿左派对婚姻平等运动的批判，这场运动在20世纪末和21世纪初主导了美国男女同性恋政治。Lisa Duggan认为，曾经的局外人身份为批判资本主义和自由民主国家如何携手将性私有化并倡导集体主义应对社会不平等和不公正提供了一个平台，现代婚姻平等运动“维护、维持并寻求融入……异质存在的机构……同时承诺有可能出现一个复员的同性恋选民群体和一个以家庭生活和消费为基础的私有化、非政治化的同性恋文化。”
{"title":"Love-Politics: Lesbian Wedding Practices in Canada and the United States from the 1920s to the 1970s","authors":"Elise Chenier","doi":"10.7560/JHS27204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/JHS27204","url":null,"abstract":"I n 1972 t h e B r o o k l y n B a s e d lesbian feminist periodical Echo of Sappho profiled Sandy and June, a white butch and femme couple, on the occasion of their recent wedding ceremony. Sandy and June were one among hundreds of same-sex couples who had exchanged vows at Father Robert Mary Clement’s Church of the Beloved Disciple, which opened in 1970 to cater to the spiritual needs of lesbians and gays. When asked how they felt about their wedding “in relationship to the women’s movement,” Sandy and June did not respond directly, describing instead what their marriage meant to them: it was “a holy union and very beautiful,” they said. “This church makes you feel as normal as anyone could be.” Sandy and June’s embrace of normal seems to anticipate the queer Left critique of the marriage equality movement that dominated American lesbian and gay politics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Where once one’s outsider status provided a perch from which to critique how capitalism and liberal democratic states worked hand in hand to privatize sexuality and to advocate for collectivist responses to social inequalities and injustices, Lisa Duggan argues, the modern marriage equality movement “upholds, sustains, and seeks inclusion within . . . heterosexist institutions . . . while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption.” June and Sandy’s seeming inability to draw a connection","PeriodicalId":45704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Sexuality","volume":"27 1","pages":"294 - 321"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48754413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
W h y d i d G o d d e s t r o y t h e cities of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone? Since the High Middle Ages, there has been a clear and popular answer to that question: for the sin of male-male sexual congress. As a number of groundbreaking studies have demonstrated, however, the homosexual reading of the sin of Sodom was an addition of later commentators to the biblical narrative. The book of Genesis itself does not imply same-sex relations. In early Christian writings, too, the emphasis was not upon the sexual deviance of the Sodomites but upon their pride or their violation of guest rights. The reading of the Sodom narrative as a punishment for homosexual sin only began to develop in later centuries—this would culminate in the invention of a new word, “sodomy,” to refer to homosexual sin. Many scholars identify the writings of Augustine, the celebrated bishop of Hippo, as a particular turning point in the evolution of the image of Sodom’s sin. In book 16 of De ciuitate Dei (The City of God), composed in 420 CE, Augustine states that the reason God punished the citizens of Sodom was because of their sin, identified as “illicit sexual intercourse with men” (stupra in masculos). Historians have seen this statement as the first attempt in Latin Christian literature to explicitly link the sin of Sodom with homosexual sin. J. A. Loader believes that Augustine’s depiction set the
{"title":"The Sin of Sodom in Late Antiquity","authors":"E. Ahern","doi":"10.7560/JHS27201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/JHS27201","url":null,"abstract":"W h y d i d G o d d e s t r o y t h e cities of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone? Since the High Middle Ages, there has been a clear and popular answer to that question: for the sin of male-male sexual congress. As a number of groundbreaking studies have demonstrated, however, the homosexual reading of the sin of Sodom was an addition of later commentators to the biblical narrative. The book of Genesis itself does not imply same-sex relations. In early Christian writings, too, the emphasis was not upon the sexual deviance of the Sodomites but upon their pride or their violation of guest rights. The reading of the Sodom narrative as a punishment for homosexual sin only began to develop in later centuries—this would culminate in the invention of a new word, “sodomy,” to refer to homosexual sin. Many scholars identify the writings of Augustine, the celebrated bishop of Hippo, as a particular turning point in the evolution of the image of Sodom’s sin. In book 16 of De ciuitate Dei (The City of God), composed in 420 CE, Augustine states that the reason God punished the citizens of Sodom was because of their sin, identified as “illicit sexual intercourse with men” (stupra in masculos). Historians have seen this statement as the first attempt in Latin Christian literature to explicitly link the sin of Sodom with homosexual sin. J. A. Loader believes that Augustine’s depiction set the","PeriodicalId":45704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Sexuality","volume":"27 1","pages":"209 - 233"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42818312","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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