This book updates and adds to the classic Social Movements of the Sixties and Seventies, showing how social movement theory has grown and changed.

Metamorphoses of the Zoo marshals a unique compendium of critical interventions that envision novel modes of authentic encounter that cultivate humanity's biophilic tendencies without abusing or degrading other animals. These take the form of radical restructurings of what were formerly zoos or map out entirely new, post-zoo sites or experiences. The result is a volume that contributes to moral progress on the inter-species front and eco-psychological health for a humankind whose habitats are now mostly citified or urbanizing.

Understanding Gay and Lesbian Youth assists the classroom teacher, school counselor, and administrator in relating to gay and lesbian youth and creating accepting and supportive learning climates. David Campos begins with a discussion of the current state of affairs regarding gay and lesbian youth in schools, including a discourse on the developmental milestones, and provides practical strategies for working effectively with these students.

"My work has had nothing to do with gay liberation," Michel Foucault reportedly told an admirer in 1975. And indeed there is scarcely more than a passing mention of homosexuality in Foucault's scholarly writings. So why has Foucault, who died of AIDS in 1984, become a powerful source of both personal and political inspiration to an entire generation of gay activists? And why have his political philosophy and his personal life recently come under such withering, normalizing scrutiny by commentators as (...) diverse as Camille Paglia, Richard Mohr, Bruce Bawer, Roger Kimball, and biographer James Miller? David M. Halperin's Saint Foucault is an uncompromising and impassioned defense of the late French philosopher and historian as a galvanizing thinker whose career as a theorist and activist will continue to serve as a model for other gay intellectuals, activists, and scholars. A close reading of both Foucault and the increasing attacks on his life and work, it explains why straight liberals so often find in Foucault only counsels of despair on the subject of politics, whereas gay activists look to him not only for intellectual inspiration but also for a compelling example of political resistance. Halperin rescues Foucault from the endless nature-versus-nurture debate over the origins of homosexuality ("On this question I have absolutely nothing to say," Foucault himself once remarked) and argues that Foucault's decision to treat sexuality not as a biological or psychological drive but as an effect of discourse, as the product of modern systems of knowledge and power, represents a crucial political breakthrough for lesbians and gay men. Halperin explains how Foucault's radical vision of homosexuality as a strategic opportunity for self-transformation anticipated the new anti-assimilationist, anti-essentialist brand of sexual identity politics practiced by contemporary direct-action groups such as ACT UP. Halperin also offers the first synthetic account of Foucault's thinking about gay sex and the future of the lesbian and gay movement, as well as an up-to-the-minute summary of the most recent work in queer theory. "Where there is power, there is resistance," Michel Foucault wrote in The History of Sexuality, Volume I. Erudite, biting, and surprisingly moving, Saint Foucault represents Halperin's own resistance to what he views as the blatant and systematic misrepresentation of a crucial intellectual figure, a misrepresentation he sees as dramatic evidence of the continuing personal, professional, and scholarly vulnerability of all gay activists and intellectuals in the age of AIDS. (shrink)

In this remarkable study, David A. J. Richards combines an interpretive history of culture and law, political philosophy, and constitutional analysis to explain the background, development, and growing impact of two of the most important and challenging human rights movements of our time, feminism and gay rights. Richards argues that both movements are extensions of rights-based dissent, rooted in antebellum abolitionist feminism that condemned both American racism and sexism. He sees the progressive role of such radical dissent as an (...) emancipated moral voice in the American constitutional tradition. He examines the role of dissident African Americans, Jews, women, and homosexuals in forging alternative visions of rights-based democracy. He also draws special attention to Walt Whitman's visionary poetry, showing how it made space for the silenced and subjugated voices of homosexuals in public and private culture. According to Richards, contemporary feminism rediscovers and elaborates this earlier tradition. And, similarly, the movement for gay rights builds upon an interpretation of abolitionist feminism developed by Whitman in his defense, both in poetry and prose, of love between men. Richards explores Whitman's impact on pro-gay advocates, including John Addington Symonds, Havelock Ellis, Edward Carpenter, Oscar Wilde, and André Gide. He also discusses other diverse writers and reformers such as Margaret Sanger, Franz Boas, Elizabeth Stanton, W. E. B. DuBois, and Adrienne Rich. Richards addresses current controversies such as the exclusion of homosexuals from the military and from the right to marriage and concludes with a powerful defense of the struggle for such constitutional rights in terms of the principles of rights-based feminism. (shrink)

Ces notes de terrain rendent compte d'une enquête sur un mouvement collectif contemporain qui a organisé pendant cinq ans des rencontres non-mixtes homosexuelles appelées Croisières. Ces rencontres bi-annuelles d'une semaine visaient à rassembler des homosexuels proches des idées libertaires et ne se reconnaissant pas dans les normes du mainstream gay et proposaient au contraire une alternative à ce modèle. L'hypothèse proposée est que, si les Croisières ont été pensées d'abord dans une perspective politique, elles ont eu aussi et peut-être avant (...) tout une fonction initiatique et thérapeutique pour ses participants. En effet, ces rencontres ont été, pour un certain nombre de participants l'occasion de faire émerger une parole sur des violences sexuelles subies et un moyen de les prendre en charge. (shrink)

The Buddhist view of the mind - how it works, how it goes wrong, how to put it right - is increasingly being recognised as profound and highly practical by scientists, counsellors and other professionals. In The Psychology of Awakening, this powerful vision of human nature, and its implications for personal and social life, are for the first time brought to a wider audience by some of those most influential in exploring its potential for the way we live today. These (...) include: David Brazier Jon Kabat Zinn Francisco Varela Joy Manne Geshe Thubten Jinpa Mark Epstein Gay Watson Maura Sills Guy Claxton Stephen Batchelor Deeply relevant, accessible and authoritative, The Psychology of Awakening will be of interest to all those who wish to understand the workings of their minds a little better and who are also seeking new ways of mastering the challenges - personal, professional and cultural with which modern life confronts us all. (shrink)

As a young gay man, David Bennett saw Christianity as an enemy to freedom for LGBTQI people, and his early experiences with prejudice and homophobia led him to become a gay activist. But when Jesus came into his life in a highly unexpected way, he was led down a path he never would have predicted or imagined. A War of Loves investigates what the Bible teaches about sexuality and demonstrates the profligate, unqualified grace of God for all people. (...) class='Hi'>David describes the joy and intimacy he found in following Jesus Christ and how love has taken on a radically new and far richer meaning for him. (shrink)

This paper investigates the logistics of crafting and accounting for animal realities on television. Using the case of The Making of David Attenborough’s Conquest of the Skies, a behind-the-scenes documentary about how the Sky TV series David Attenborough’s Conquest of the Skies was created, it explores how the material reality of animals becomes a televisual reality. In seeking to challenge the lingering concern within many media studies critiques of wildlife TV about the constructed and manipulated nature of televisual (...) animals, we propose an approach focused on how realities are provoked. This approach draws on recent debates within STS and screen theory about the contingent elements and accountability relations that become practically operative in making something real. Equally significant is the animal performer. How do the animals, often domesticated, that are used in television to simulate wildness or scientific facts participate in and resist the television apparatus? And how do these animal performances shape distinct animal–human relations and contact zones? (shrink)

Reading the New Nietzsche is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of the four most important and widely read of Nietzsche's works. After a largely biographical introduction, a chapter is devoted to each work. Read in succession they give an overall philosophical account of Nietzsche's thought.

Two studies demonstrate that a dispositional proneness to disgust (“disgust sensitivity”) is associated with intuitive disapproval of gay people. Study 1 was based on previous research showing that people are more likely to describe a behavior as intentional when they see it as morally wrong (see Knobe, 2006, for a review). As predicted, the more disgust sensitive participants were, the more likely they were to describe an agent whose behavior had the side effect of causing gay men to kiss in (...) public as having intentionally encouraged gay men to kiss publicly— even though most participants did not explicitly think it wrong to encourage gay men to kiss in public. No such effect occurred when subjects were asked about heterosexual kissing. Study 2 used the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2006) as a dependent measure. The more disgust sensitive participants were, the more they showed.. (shrink)

In the Fray collects David Gushee's most significant essays over twenty years as a Christian intellectual. Most of the essays were written in situations of ethical conflict on the highly contested ground of Christian public ethics. Topics addressed include torture, climate change, marriage and divorce, the treatment of gays and lesbians in the church, war, genocide, nuclear weapons, race, global poverty, faith and politics, Israel/Palestine, and even whether Christian ethics is a real academic discipline. Quite visible in the collection (...) is Gushee's deep research interest in the Nazi era in Germany and how the churches fared in resisting Nazi intimidations and seductions and, finally, the Holocaust. All essays reflect the desire for a church that has learned the lessons of that period--a church with resistance to racism, militarism, nationalism, and other social-ideological toxins, and with the discernment and courage to resist these in favor of a courageous allegiance to the lordship of Christ at the time of testing. Considerable attention is directed to contesting some of the public ethics found in the author's own US evangelical Christian community. Concluding reflections on Gushee's ethical vision are offered in an illuminating essay by senior Christian ethicist Glen Harold Stassen. (shrink)

What are ‘gay genes’ and are they real? This article looks at key research into these hypothesized gay genes, made possible, in part, by the Human Genome Project. I argue that the complexity of both genetics and human sexuality demands a truly critical approach: one that takes into account feminist epistemologies of science and queer approaches to the body, while putting into conversation resources from agential realism and critical realism. This approach is able to maintain the agential complexity of genetic (...) materiality, while also critically challenging the seemingly stable relationships between sex, gender and sexuality. (shrink)

Mobile applications and socio-sexual networking websites are used by outreach workers to respond synchronously to questions and provide information, resources, and referrals on sexual health and STI/HIV prevention, testing, and care to gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men. This exploratory study examined ethical issues identified by online outreach workers who conduct online sexual health outreach for GB2M. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted between November 2013 and April 2014 with online providers and managers to explore the benefits, (...) challenges, and ethical implications of delivering online outreach services in Ontario, Canada. Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. Thematic analyses were conducted, and member-checking, analyses by multiple coders, and peer debriefing supported validity and reliability. Four themes emerged on the ethical queries of providing online sexual health outreach for GB2M: managing personal and professional boundaries with clients; disclosing personal or identifiable information to clients; maintaining client confidentiality and anonymity; and security and data storage measures of online information. Participants illustrated familiarity with potential ethical challenges, and discussed ways in which they seek to mitigate and prevent ethical conflict. Implications of this analysis for outreach workers, researchers, bioethicists, and policy-makers are to: understand ethical complexities associated with online HIV prevention and outreach for GB2M; foster dialogue to recognize and address potential ethical conflict; and identify competencies and skills to mitigate risk and promote responsive and accessible online HIV outreach. (shrink)

These essays highlight the shifting sets of relationships which determine the forms taken by desire. They argue that the spread of the subject within and across geographic, ethnic, class and gender boundaries makes a difference to the ways in which desire is theorized, experienced and represented.

1. Hobbes-Gay.--2. Hume-Bentham and Index.

In the face of impending global crises and stubborn conflicts, a conventional view of politics risks leaving us confused and fatalistic, feeling powerless because we are unaware of all that can be achieved by political means. By contrast, a variety of recent social movements, ranging from those of women, gays and lesbians and anti-racists, to environmentalists, the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring, demonstrate the enormous potential of political action beyond the institutional sphere of politics. At the same time, religious (...) fundamentalists, racial supremacists and ultra-nationalists make clear that movements are not necessarily progressive and are often at odds with one another. -/- West highlights the many ways in which national and global institutions depend on a broader context of extra-institutional action or what is, in effect, the formative dimension of politics. He explores some of the major contributions of social movements: from the genealogy of liberal democratic nation-states, sixties’ radicalism and the ‘new social movements’ to the politics of sexuality, gender and identity, the politicization of nature and climate, and alter-globalization. The book also considers current theoretical approaches and sets out the basis for a critical theory of social movements. This is a fresh and original account of social movements in politics and will be essential reading for any students and scholars interested in the challenges and the unpredictable potential of political action. (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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.1 (2003) 112-125 [Access article in PDF] You Make My Heart Sing David Rothenberg Last March I went to Pittsburgh to play music live with birds. The plan was to arrive at dawn, to catch the wary singers at their best—in the early morning chorus, when the most sound was happening. I met my friend Michael Pestel at the gates of the National Aviary, (...) a mostly forgotten federal institution in a rundown neighborhood. I had never heard of the aviary before Pestel told me what a great place it was to jam with the more-than-human world. The staff was rumored to be friendly, and they liked to let musicians in during the early hours before the public, mostly guided schoolchildren, would storm the gates.Pestel was there with his flute and various homemade stringed instruments. I had clarinets and saxophones, coaxed out of their cases, a bit tired from the long ride, but ready to hear what these birds had up their sleeves. We headed for the marsh room, a vaulted expanse with an observation deck and waterbirds from all over the world. I strained my ears to catch some pretty rocking bird beats, but they sounded familiar. Too familiar—the aviary was blaring Marvin Gaye at top volume to these birds at six o'clock in the morning. They were definitely squawkin' and squealin'."I cannot work in these conditions," muttered Pestel. "We've got to get these people to turn that racket down.""Didn't you warn them we were coming?""No," he shook his head. "You can't do that. Art always arrives without warning." [End Page 112]"You sure they'll let us do this?""No problem, man, I've come here many times before. These people know me. These birds know me."Marvin was turned down. The sprinklers were turned down (rain must start in the rainforest room every day before sunrise). How else to keep the gaudy barbets happy? Does a blue-crowned motmot (Momotus momota) or a violaceous euphonia (Euphonia violacea) really want to hear strange instrumental shrieks before breakfast? Weren't they content with "What's Going On?"Athanasius Kircher 1 knew the birds were onto something even in 1650:And then Wittgenstein had the nerve to warn us that if a lion could talk, we would not understand him. 2 When a lion roars, we do understand him (or her). If a cat purrs, we understand her, too. If the voice of an animal is not heard as message but as art, interesting things start to happen: Nature is no longer inscrutable, some alien puzzle, but instead immediately something beautiful, a source of exuberant song, a tune with some space for us to enter, at once a creative place for humanity to join in.We set up on the wooden deck, listening out over the water. Instruments out of their cases, recording equipment wired and set to go. An American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) was in the center of the action, sitting on a branch at the side of the room. He cocked his head, eyed us knowingly. Looking like there was something he wanted to say. [End Page 113]Pestel played a long, low sliding note, followed by a scratchy puff of air. Something strange swooped down next to my feet, shuffled its large black wings. Some kind of ungainly turkey... I read from a plaque on the railing that it was a Palawan peacock pheasant (Polyplectron emphanum). Its quizzical gaze was mute."What are you looking at?" I glared. He stepped cautiously toward the microphone cable, ready to gobble it in his hooked, formidable beak."Hey," I brushed him off. "Stop dancing. Sing!" But no, he was the prancing, silent type.All of a sudden there was a strange voice. A human voice? "Who." I heard. "Who. Who what where why. Who what where why."It was the crow. But not just any crow. He spoke."Did you hear that?" I coaxed Pestel up from the flute."Oh," he said. "That's Mickey. He's been here for years.""Does... (shrink)

Even among scholars who emphasize Nietzsche’s naturalism (“the naturalists”), what it actually involves is disputed. This article identifies the foundations of Nietzsche’s naturalism and then elaborates on these foundations through a critical analysis of the works of those naturalists who also identify them. Nietzsche is a methodological naturalist, who, epistemically, is a reliabilist, and while he acknowledges the innate limitations of our cognitive inheritance, which is reflected in his perspectivism, he sees no reason to conclude that we cannot grasp the (...) natural world truly. As to the primary issue in scientific explanation, causation, Nietzsche adopts a regularity theory as early as The Gay Science, and, on the basis of this theory, rejects determinism. One consequence of this analysis is that Nietzsche’s naturalism is not as restrictive as the naturalists tend to portray it, and this opens up new possibilities for interpreting many of his other commitments. (shrink)

THE DISCOVERY OF DETAINEE ABUSE AT ABU GHRAIB IN 2004 FOLLOWED by the gradual disclosure or release of government documents signaling that decisive policy shifts by the U.S. government led directly to such abuses contributed to a dispiriting national debate about the morality of torture—a debate that continues today. An ongoing fracture between competing social-political-ethical visions in the evangelical world has been revealed and further exacerbated by this debate over torture. Politically conservative evangelicals restrict their policy engagement to issues such (...) as abortion and gay marriage and either steer clear of the torture issue or actually defend torture and attack antitorture efforts; centrist and progressive evangelicals favor a broader agenda that has included opposition to torture. Employing analytical categories derived from a study of Christian behavior in Nazi Europe as well as from personal experiences, this essay recounts and analyzes the torture debate as it occurred in the American evangelical community. The analysis yields the conclusion that white American evangelicalism has displayed structural theological-ethical weaknesses that make this community profoundly susceptible to state abuses of power. In response to this integrity-testing moment in evangelical life, this essay calls for a renewed evangelical commitment to a Christ-centered vision of the dignity and rights of every human being. (shrink)

How do we identify the "queer auteur" and their queer imaginings? Is it possible to account for such a figure when the very terms "queer" and "auteur" invoke aesthetic surprises and disorientations, disconcerting ironies and paradoxes, and biographical deceits and ambiguities? David A. Gerstner traces a history of ideas that spotlight an ever-shifting terrain associated with auteur theory and, in particular, queer-auteur theory. Engaging with the likes of Oscar Wilde, Walter Benjamin, James Baldwin, Jean Louis Baudry, Linda Nochlin, Jane (...) Gallop, Cáel Keegan, Luce Irigaray, and other prominent critical thinkers, Gerstner contemplates how the queer auteur in film theory might open us to the work of desire. Ultimately, Queer Imaginings is a journey in shared pleasures in which writing for and about cinema makes way for unanticipated cinematic friendships."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

College students implicitly judge interracial sex and gay sex to be morally wrong Some moral intuitions arise from psychological processes that are not fully accessible to consciousness. For instance, most people disapprove of consensual adult incest between siblings, but are unable to articulate why—they just feel that it is wrong (Haidt, 2001). More generally, there is evidence for at least two sources of moral judgment: explicit conscious reasoning and tacit intuitions, which are motivated by emotional responses (Greene et al., 2001) (...) and learned associations (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Beyond Good and Evil and the “Magnificent Tension of the Spirit” The Unveiled Truth: Preface to The Gay Science Beyond Good and Evil's “Tension of the Spirit” as it Appears in Gay Science 371 and 372 Gay Science 373 and 374: Values and Intentionality Spir's Relevance to Gay Science 373 and 374 Gay Science 374, in Light of Spir The Unveiled Truth, Revisited.

In Paradise Wild, David Oates addresses this and many other provocative questions as he explores the persistent myth of Eden from several different angles. As a lifelong mountaineer and reader of nature literature, as a scholar, as a descendant of naturalist William Bartram, and as a gay ex-Baptist who took to the mountains to test his masculinity, Oates has thought deeply about how nature and culture interact in our lives and about the contemporary debate over wilderness and environment. Paradise (...) Wild brings all these elements together in a lively, genre-hopping book that will move readers emotionally and intellectually, at the same time that it contributes to the ongoing debate in scholarly and environmental circles over the meaning of "nature" and "wilderness." Paradise Wild tells stories, explores major scholarship and literature of nature, and analyzes how the misapplied myth of Eden has mired Americans in a hopeless "Paradise Lost" mentality that belies the true, ever-present wildness in our lives. Oates argues that mourning for a lost paradise is a dead end that cannot help us combat the real damage we're doing to ourselves and the rest of the world. He proposes a healthy re-mythologizing of the Eden story as a way of celebrating "wildness" -- the Eden in each moment and in each cell, that cannot be lost. His book is about welcoming that wildness into the midst of daily life. This bold and original work will appeal to general readers as well as to scholars and students with an interest in environmental literature and philosophy, nature writing, cultural studies, and queer studies. (shrink)

Affectivity and the Hermeneutics of Power: A Commentary on Aphorism 13 ofThe Gay Science.Section 13 ofThe Gay Scienceis devoted to the doctrine of the feeling of power, which recapitulates Nietzsche’s main ideas of the previous years and already presents them in the form of a doctrine that does not yet bear the name “will to power.” Hence, GS 13 is a turning point in the development of Nietzsche’s philosophy of power, which, from the perspective of feeling, points to two essential (...) components of all power: affect and hermeneutics. This article retraces the structure of the section and the main features of the feeling of power with special attention to the progression of the first twelve sections. It provides a better understanding ofThe Gay Scienceand of Nietzsche’s philosophy of power by paying due consideration to a severely underestimated concept, which most commentators have reduced to a mere psychological and draft version of the famous later concept of “will to power.” Although the purpose of this article is not to confront both formulations, some analyses (e. g., on vanity, sacrifice, hedonism, on the continuity and complementarity of strong and weak natures as well as of their moralities) will prove useful to gain a better insight into Nietzsche’s overall conception of power. (shrink)

The relationship between opera and gay subcultures (especially male), lifestyle practices and consumerism has been noted by cultural critics and musicologists - the former in affirmative terms, the latter largely hostile. This article explores this relationship initially through a review of the existing literature before concentrating on the striking affinities in the discursive construction of both cultural forms. In the modern era, both opera and homosexuality have been stigmatized and marginalized in their respective rationalizing ‘scientific’ domains: musicology and sexology. Both (...) have been authoritatively declared unhealthy, both reconstructed out of the distinctive repressions of Victorianism, both subsequently searching for inclusion and legitimacy. (shrink)

Most evangelical Christians have understood their faith, rooted in a high view of biblical authority, to be irreconcilable with "homosexuality." This has meant that devoted LGBT people raised as evangelical Christians must choose between their sexuality and their faith/religious community. This creates enormous psychic distress, turns LGBT Christians and their allies away from Christianity, and contributes to intense alienation between the gay community and evangelicals all over the world. But traditional evangelical attitudes on LGBT people and their relationships are beginning (...) to change. This paper offers a description of the state of the conversation in the North American evangelical community on this issue, and summarizes my own normative proposal. (shrink)

[Eve] Sedgwick examines from an explicitly feminist, implicitly Marxist perspective the relation of homosexuality to more general social bonds between members of the same sex . She argues that the similarity between homosocial desire and homosexuality lies at the root of much homophobia. Moreover, she sees this tension as misogynist to the extent that battles fought over patriarchy within the homosocial world automatically exclude women from that patriarchal power. Thus she places homosexuality and its attendant homophobia within a wider dynamic (...) of social relationships.1Yet even as Sedgwick invents a more sophisticated definition of “homophobia,” she may permit misreading of a more elementary sort. Her use of vocabulary is troubling. In a slangy prose that regularly juxtaposes James Hogg and Louis Lepke, Tennyson and Howard Keel, references to the “campiness” of Thackeray’s “bitchy” bachelors or the “feminized” cuckolds of Wycherley’s The Country Wife seem tame enough. Yet there is a political difference between the jokes. One can burlesque fifties musicals or organized crime with impunity; to refer to sexually embattled men with feminine adjectives, however, is to reinforce a sexual stereotype that sees in the supposed effeminacy of homosexuals a sign of their deviance. Nor are women empowered when terms of female degradation like “bitch” are turned back against men: the ironic reversal does not challenge the terms’ validity but reaffirms it, showing they have an even wider range of applicability than had been thought. 1. Throughout my analysis, I use “homosexual” and “gay” exclusively in reference to male sexuality. I do so in part to echo Sedgwick’s emphasis and in part because the logic of my own argument does not empower me to speak on female homosexuality. David Van Leer is associate professor of English and American literature at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of Emerson’s Epistemology: The Argument of the Essays and articles on American literature and popular culture. (shrink)

The uniquely human emotion of disgust is intimately connected to morality in many, perhaps all, cultures. We report two studies suggesting that a predisposition to feel disgust is associated with more conservative political attitudes, especially for issues related to the moral dimension of purity. In the first study, we document a positive correlation between disgust sensitivity and self-reported conservatism in a broad sample of US adults. In Study 2 we show that while disgust sensitivity is associated with more conservative attitudes (...) on a range of political issues, this relationship is strongest for purity-related issues—specifically, abortion and gay marriage. (shrink)

RESUMOO presente artigo analisa processos de alterização na biologia humana e na biomedicina. A alterização é entendida aqui como o processo cultural de produção de alteridades por meio da delimitação, rotulação e categorização das formas possíveis de ser outro, desde um determinado marco de referência sócio-histórico. Ainda que a alterização faça parte de qualquer processo de delimitação de categorias de identidade no seio de uma cultura - e, nesse sentido, possa apresentar visões do outro tanto positivas quanto negativas -, aqui (...) nos interessamos especificamente na alterização como fator de marginalização e exclusão social de diferentes grupos humanos. São analisados diversos processos de alterização operantes nos discursos e nas práticas das ciências biomédicas ao longo de sua história recente, os quais têm conduzido à exclusão social de diferentes categorias de outros, ou a tratá-los como inferiores, em pretendidas bases científicas, ou em função de determinadas práticas institucionalizadas dentro da comunidade científica. Exemplos típicos de grupos marginalizados pelas ciências ocidentais ao longo de sua história incluem as raças não europeias, as mulheres, os homossexuais e os "pobres". O principal objetivo do presente artigo é analisar, na história recente das ciências biomédicas, esses processos de alterização que têm conduzido à marginalização de tais grupos e a considerá-los como inferiores. ABSTRACTThis article analyzes processes of "othering" in human biology and biomedicine. Othering is understood here as the cultural process of production of otherness by means of the delimitation, tagging, and categorization of the possible ways of being "other" within a given socio-historical context. Although othering can be considered as a constitutive aspect of any process of delimitation of identities within a given culture - and in this sense it can present both positive and negative views of the "other" -, in the present article we are specifically interested in processes of othering that lead to the marginalization and social exclusion of different human groups. We will analyze processes of othering, which have operated in the discourses and practices of biomedical sciences throughout their recent history, that have led to the social exclusion of different categories of "others", or to treating them as inferior, and that have supposedly scientific bases or as a consequence of the institutionalization of certain practices within the scientific community. Typical examples of these "others", marginalized by the Western sciences throughout their history, are the non-European "races", women, gay and lesbian people, and the "poor". The main objective of this article is to analyze, in the recent history of the biomedical technosciences, these different processes of othering that have led to the marginalization of such "others" and to treating them as inferior. (shrink)

Legal theorists are familiar with John Finnis's book Natural Law and Natural Rights, but usually overlook his interventions in US constitutional debates and his membership of a group of conservative Catholic thinkers, the 'new natural lawyers', led by theologian Germain Grisez. In fact, Finnis has repeatedly advocated conservative positions concerning lesbian and gay rights, contraception and abortion, and his substantive moral theory derives from Grisez. Bamforth and Richards provide a detailed explanation of the work of the new natural lawyers within (...) and outside the Catholic Church - the first truly comprehensive explanation available to legal theorists - and criticize Grisez's and Finnis's arguments concerning sexuality and gender. New natural law is, they argue, a theology rather than a secular theory, and one which is unappealing in a modern constitutional democracy. This book will be of interest to legal and political theorists, ethicists, theologians and scholars of religious history. (shrink)

Traducción del articulo de Judith Butler Wittig's Material Practice: Universalizing a Minority Point of View, publicado en el año 2007 en la revista GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Volumen 13, no. 4, págs. 519-533.

Why is America again unjustly at war? Why is its politics distorted by wedge issues like abortion and gay marriage? Why is anti-Semitism still so powerfully resurgent? Such contradictions within democracies arise from a patriarchal psychology still alive in our personal and political lives in tension with the equal voice that is the basis of democracy. This book joins a psychological approach with a political-theoretical one that traces both this psychology and resistance to it to the Roman Republic and Empire (...) and to three Latin masterpieces: Virgil's Aeneid, Apuleius's The Golden Ass, and Augustine's Confessions. In addition, this book explains many other aspects of our present situation including why movements of ethical resistance are often accompanied by a freeing of sexuality and why we are witnessing an aggressive fundamentalism at home and abroad. (shrink)

In the United Kingdom, the debate about how best to meet the shortfall of organs for transplantation has persisted on and off for many years. It is often presumed that the answer is simply to alter the law to a system of presumed consent. Acting perhaps on that presumption in his annual report launched in July, the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, advocated a system of organ donation based on presumed consent, the so-called “opt-out” system.1 He is calling for (...) a change in the law in England and Wales whereby consent to organ donation is presumed, making a person’s organs automatically available for transplantation after death, unless they registered objections to this while alive. Subsequently, the British Medical Association lent its support to the introduction of such a system.2 The BMA contends that “the practice of presumed consent legislation has had a significant effect on the number of cadaveric donors per million population.”2It is often taken for granted that there must be a correlation between the enactment of legislation on presumed consent and an increase in organ donation and procurement. However, the correlation is not as straightforward as it might seem. It may be that other practical measures to encourage organ donation could be implemented without changing the Human Tissue Act 2004, an Act which has been in force for barely a year.An analysis by Abadie and Gay demonstrated that “presumed consent legislation has a positive and sizeable effect on organ donation rates”,3 but they themselves admitted that the correlation between rates of donation and presumed consent legislation is “not completely unequivocal”.3 It is true that among the most successful cases in procurement rates are countries with presumed consent legislation . However, since some of the …. (shrink)

This is an excerpt from the contentIn his latest book, David A. J. Richards extends his analysis of patriarchy and resistance, two of his most cherished themes, to the sphere of historical analysis. The Edwin D. Webb Professor of Law at New York University School of Law here attempts to explore the relationship between these two ideas and the Western history of imperialism. He tries to show that one cannot fully understand the fall of legitimacy of the imperial ideal (...) in the twentieth century without taking into account the opposition against patriarchy that emerged out of a specific movement of resistance, the Bloosmbury Group.Richards devotes the first chapter of his book to demonstrate the thesis that the main feature of imperialism is its patriarchal nature. He does so by exposing the centrality of patriarchy in the Roman and British imperial models. While in the former the patriarchal culture structured both private and public life so as to render men profoundly violent and therefore unable to sustain its hegemonic. (shrink)