The Cushing Library/Women & Gender Studies copy was acquired as part of The Don Kelly Research Collection of Gay Literature and Culture.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
Introduction: The last acceptable prejudice -- Homosexuality -- Homophobia -- History -- pt. 1: Before homophobia?: "Homosexuality and "homophobia" in antiquity -- 1. Inventing Eros: Imagining Eros ; Legitimating Eros ; Greek homosexuality and homophobia -- 2. Against nature: Imagining Effeminacy ; Unnatural crimes ; Indicting effeminacy -- 3. Making monsters: Imperial desire ; Naming perverts ; Diagnosing deviance -- 4. The end of antiquity: Affairs of the heart ; The triumph of Charicles -- pt. 2: Inventing Sodom: Sodom and homosexual behavior in the Old and New Testaments -- 5. The Sodom story: Fire from Heaven ; Sodom and homosexuality in other Old Testament texts ; Interpreting Sodom ; Sodom and sexual deviance -- 6. Gospel sodomy: The unnameable sin ; Testifying to perversion ; Paul on punishment ; Reinventing Sodom -- pt. 3: A thousand years of sodomy: defining sodomy, 500-1400 -- 7. Avenging flames: Avenging flames ; Rooting out depravity in the West ; Repenting for pleasure ; Something shameful -- 8. The plague of sodomy: Theorizing sin ; Criminalizing sodomy ; Identifying sodomites ; Sodomite and Heretic ; The trial of Arnald of Verniolle ; Is it a sin to love? ; The plague of sodomy ; The burning question -- pt. 4: Lighting bonfires: sodomy and anxiety in the Renaissance -- 9. Reinventing sodomy: Sodomy and friendship ; Sodomy and satire ; Sodomy and the Black Death ; Sodomy and religious factionalism ; Sodomy and treason -- 10. A continental epidemic: The Italian panic ; Spanish sodomy ; A Portuguese sodomite ; Effeminacy in France ; Counting sodomites in Geneva -- 11. England's abominable vice: Sodomy and criminal law ; Redefining sodomy ; Literary sodomites ; Inventing homophobia -- pt. 5: Sodomy and the Enlightenment: unmasking and punishing sodomites, 1700-1860 -- 12. Societies of sodomites: Effeminate weaklings ; Persecution in the Dutch Republic ; Imagining sodomites ; A detestable race ; A cry for reform ; Risking their necks ; The end of sodomy? -- pt. 6: Victorian secrets: Uranians, inverts, perverts, and homosexuals, 1850-1910 -- 13. Inverting perversion: The invention of abnormality ; A flourishing literature ; Fictive strategies -- 14. Modern ethics: The social value of homosexuality ; The panic terror that prevails ; Sexual inversion ; Symbolic sodomite ; Outlaws -- pt. 7: New world homophobia: sodomy and persecution in America, 1500-1900 -- 15. Colonizing Sodom: Eliminating Sodom ; New English sodomy -- 16. The discord young men feel: Friendship and anxiety ; Sexual comrades ; Unmanly passions -- 17. In fear of fairies: Natural objects of disgust ; Colonies of perverts ; Policing perverts -- pt. 8: Normal homosexuals: homophobia and resistance in the twentieth century -- 18. The riddle of homosexuality: Oswald's story ; The intersexes ; Introducing Jennie June -- 19. Hit them! Hit back!: Strike ; Counterstrike ; Disgusting performances ; Rights and cults ; Inferior human beings -- 20. American masculinity: Sinister decadence ; Cataloguing sex ; Gardens of pansies ; Demand our rights! -- 21. A panic close to madness: Narrow sensibilities ; Good gay poets ; Drama queens ; Pride and prejudice -- Epilogue: The last acceptable prejudice: Homophobia ; Prancing activists ; From tolerance to acceptance?
Summary
Studies how same-sex desire has been the object of legal, social, and religious persecution throughout history.