Homophobia
A History
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The first comprehensive history of homophobia-from ancient Athens to the halls of Congress-this bold, original work is certain to become a classic.
It is the last acceptable prejudice. In an age when racial and ethnic name-calling are viewed with distaste, and physical epithets are frowned upon, hatred of homosexuals remains rife. Now, in a tour de force of historical and literary research, Byrne Fone chronicles the evolution of homophobia through the centuries. Delving into literary sources as diverse as Greek philosophy, the Bible, Elizabethan poetry, and the Victorian novel, as well as historical texts and propaganda from the French Revolution to the Moral Majority, Fone finds that same-sex desire has always been the object of legal, social, and religious persecution. Fone shows how the biblical story of Sodom became the primary source for later prohibitions against homosexuality. He charts the subtle shifts in public attitudes and law, from Anglo-Saxon edicts that imposed death by burning upon "confess'd sodomytes," to Victorian decrees that punished sodomy with "forfeiture of all rights, including procreation" (i.e., castration). Sifting the evidence of our own times, including Reader's Digest articles and TV talk-show transcripts, Fone demonstrates that homophobia remains one of the central tenets of law, science, faith, and literature, and defines the very essence of what it means to be male or female. Written by an acclaimed expert in gay and lesbian history, Homophobia is the best sort of history: lively, accessible, and enlightening.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Antipathy, condemnation, loathing, fear and proscription of homosexual behavior" have taken many forms over the centuries. In this lucid history, Fone (The Columbia Encyclopedia of Gay Literature) charts the ways in which homophobia has induced legal, medical, social and ecclesiastical authorities to punish--and kill--gay men. Drawing upon accepted classics of gay studies--John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality, David F. Greenberg's Construction of Homosexuality and Jonathan Ned Katz's Gay/Lesbian Almanac, as well as other books and articles--Fone's compendium of social intolerance argues that, despite social progress, hating homosexuals is "the last acceptable prejudice." The litany of horrors--biblical condemnation, slander, whipping, imprisonment, drowning, garroting and castration--is chilling, yet even more disturbing is the author's contention that violence against homosexuals has been central to Western culture. Nonetheless, several flaws keep the book from becoming more than a well-written primer. For one, Fone contributes little original research, instead relying on traditional lesbian and gay scholarship, yet he ignores some of the newest, most challenging work in the field (such as Carolyn Dinshaw's Getting Medieval). Most provocatively, while he addresses the differences between essentialist and social constructionist theories of gay identity, he declares that homophobia has a clear, unchanging, social and political character. Also problematic is the book's failure to address the violence perpetuated against lesbians. Still, at a time when the word "homophobia" is dismissed by many as politically correct rhetoric, Fone's work remains a powerful introduction to the undeniable historical impact of the attitudes it describes.
