In The End of the Homosexual? part memoir/part politicss; Dennis Altman connects what has happened within the changing queer world over the past forty years to larger social, political and cultural trends. This is a case study of both local and global change, yet one told from personal experience. Written engagingly, this timely new book explores the idea that major changes in the understanding of sexual and gender diversity reflect larger social and cultural shifts. For example, the internet has changed patterns of sexual behaviour as widely as did the contraceptive pill forty years ago. In both cases the changes were neither foreseen nor intended, and in both cases the impact of new technologies partly depended on political and ideological controls. Homosexuality has become a faultline for debates about western influence, and human rights. In this riveting and personally revealing work, Altman reflects on decades of cultural and political change and considers the future of sexuality: is this the end of the homosexual that gay liberationists predicted forty years ago?
Gay is a phase. Not something people go through in adolescence, but, like feminism, a cultural, historical movement, on the way to something bigger. Through the prism of his own sexual past and present, with a wide array of references to pop culture, literature and history, Archer traces the rise and imminent fall of gay. Along the way, he cites historical examples of greater sexual liberation, embracing the lessons of these precedents as models for our own less inhibited times. Celebrating art that expresses love and passion unfettered by gender, Archer claims Shakespeare and Prince, Goethe and Madonna, as icons for a new, more open age of sex. Stimulating, engaging and entertaining, The End of Gay is a bold work that looks forward to the vast possibilities of love without labels.
In an age where neither society nor the church knows what to do with gay Christians, Greg Coles shares his story—a story about a boy in love with Jesus who, at the fateful onset of puberty, realized his sexual attractions were persistently and exclusively for other guys. This honest, hopeful account shows life through one man's eyes and assures all people: "You are not a mistake."
A chronicle of the modern struggle for gay, lesbian and transgender rights draws on interviews with politicians, military figures, legal activists and members of the LGBT community to document the cause's struggles since the 1950s.
In Catholic Teaching on Homosexuality: New Paths to Understanding, Rev. Louis Cameli, nationally renowned pastoral leader and priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, presents the Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality with insight, new possibilities for spiritual care, and a vision for greater hospitality within the Church. Is the sexuality of homosexually inclined persons a blessing or a curse? Does it lead a person to God or away from God? Can a homosexual person be a good Catholic? With humility and pastoral sensitivity, Cameli offers hope to the many who feel alienated from the Church because of these questions. Taking his cue from Pope Benedict’s call to “express the teaching pastorally, theologically, and intellectually in the context of today’s studies of sexuality and anthropology,” he provides a deeper understanding of the Church’s theological language and stresses that while the Church is a teacher, it must also be a learner.
Do opposites attract? Is desire lack? These assumptions have become so much a part of the ways in which we conceive desire that they are rarely questioned. Yet, what do they say about how homosexuality -- a desire for the same -- is viewed in our culture? This book takes as its starting point the absence of a suitable theory of homosexual desire, a theory not predicated on such heterological assumptions. It is an investigation into how such assumptions acquired meaning within homosexual discourse, and as such is offered as an interruption within the hegemony of desire. As such, homosexual desire constitutes the biggest challenge to Western binaric thinking in that it dissolves the sacred distinctions between Same/Other, Desire/Identification, subject/object, male/female. Homotopia? (composed in 1997 but not published until now) investigates the development of a homosexual discourse at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, and reveals how that discourse worked within heterosexualized models of desire. Andre Gide's Corydon, Edward Carpenter's The Intermediate Sex, and John Addington Symond's A Problem in Modern Ethics are all pseudo-scientific texts written by non-medical men of letters, and were, in their time, highly influential on the emerging homosexual discourse. The fourth text, the twenty-odd pages of Marcel Proust's novel A la recherche de temps perdu usually referred to as 'La Race maudite,' is the most problematic, in that it appeared under the guise of fiction. But Proust originally planned this 'essay-within-a-novel' to be published separately. In it, he offers a pseudo-scientific theory of male-male love. These four texts were published between the years 1891 and 1924, an historical moment when the concept of a distinct homosexual identity took shape within a medicalized discourse centered on essential identity traits and characteristics, and they all work within the rubric of science, contributing to a discourse which saw the human race divided into two distinct categories: heterosexuals and homosexuals. How did this division come about, and what were its effects? How was this discourse sustained, and how were the meanings it produced received? For men whose erotic interest was exclusively in other men, what did it mean to see oneself and one's desires as the outcome of biology rather than moral lapse?
When a gay man or woman is faced with the reality that a growing and vibrant life in Jesus Christ is incompatible with their sexual attractions, what exactly does he or she do? What steps can be taken toward leaving the gay life and identity? In this accessible book Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International, explains the process and clarifies the expectations for those who are skeptical of change or frustrated by an ongoing struggle with same-sex attraction. Readers will learn how to enter into a new life in Christ set realistic and healthy expectations build authentic community learn to forgive overcome the power of sexual addiction Men and women of all ages who struggle with same-sex attraction will find Leaving Homosexuality indispensable in their own walk of faith...and an excellent resource to give to those who haven't yet heard that there is a new life of freedom beyond homosexuality available to them.
*Winner of the American Book Award* *Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography* An Honor Book for the 2023 Stonewall Book Award—Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Book Award This witty memoir traces a touching and often hilarious spiralic path to embracing a gay, Latinx identity against a culture of machismo—from a cockfighting ring in Nicaragua to cities across the U.S.—and the bath houses, night clubs, and drag queens who help redefine pride I’ve always found the definition of machismo to be ironic, considering that pride is a word almost unanimously associated with queer people, the enemy of machistas . . . In a world desperate to erase us, queer Latinx men must find ways to hold on to pride for survival, but excessive male pride is often what we are battling, both in ourselves and in others. A debut memoir about coming of age as a gay, Latinx man, High-Risk Homosexual opens in the ultimate anti-gay space: Edgar Gomez’s uncle’s cockfighting ring in Nicaragua, where he was sent at thirteen years old to become a man. Readers follow Gomez through the queer spaces where he learned to love being gay and Latinx, including Pulse nightclub in Orlando, a drag queen convention in Los Angeles, and the doctor’s office where he was diagnosed a “high-risk homosexual.” With vulnerability, humor, and quick-witted insights into racial, sexual, familial, and professional power dynamics, Gomez shares a hard-won path to taking pride in the parts of himself he was taught to keep hidden. His story is a scintillating, beautiful reminder of the importance of leaving space for joy.
Esta obra trata el tema de la homosexualidad poniendo enfasis en dos aspectos, el surgimiento de los homosexuales como una nueva minoria con su propia cultura, estilo de vida, movimiento politico, y reivindicacion de legitimidad; y por otra parte el impacto de esta minoria en la sociedad de su entorno. En un pais donde la gente se identifica mediante referencias de etnicidad y religion, no es sorprendente que los homosexuales se vean asimismos como un grupo etnico y pidan su reconocimiento.
Sexual identity has become an idol in both the culture at large and in the Christian subculture. And yet concepts like gay or straight are relatively recent developments in human history. We let ourselves be defined by socially constructed notions of sexual identity and sexual orientation--even though these may not be the only or...
