Homophobia: A HistoryA pioneering scholar of gay and lesbian studies presents an illuminating history of homophobia from ancient Athens to the halls of Congress. In this tour de force of historical and literary research, Byrne Fone, professor emeritus at the City University of New York, chronicles the evolution of homophobia through the centuries. Delving into literary sources as diverse as Greek philosophy, Elizabethan poetry, the Bible, and the Victorian novel, as well as historical texts and propaganda ranging from the French Revolution to the Moral Majority to the transcripts of current TV talk shows, Fone reveals how and why same-sex desire has long been the object of legal, social, religious, and political persecution. This groundbreaking work combines "a masterful command of history [with] an explosive set of assertions that fly against the conventional view of not just homophobes but of gay people themselves" (Michael Alvear, Salon). |
Contents
Chapter Two Against Nature | |
Chapter Three Making Monsters | |
Chapter Four The End of Antiquity | |
PART TWO Inventing Sodom | |
Chapter Six Gospel Sodomy | |
PART FOUR Lighting Bonfires | |
Chapter Nine Reinventing Sodomy | |
Sodomy and Friendship | |
Sodomy and Satire | |
Sodomy and the Black Death | |
Sodomy and Religious Factionalism | |
Sodomy and Treason | |
Chapter Ten A Continental Epidemic 1 The Italian Panic | |
The Unnameable | |
Testifying to Perversion | |
Paul on Punishment | |
Reinventing Sodom | |
PART THREE A Thousand Years of Sodomy | |
Chapter Seven Avenging Flames 1 Avenging Flames | |
Rooting Out Depravity in the West | |
Repenting for Pleasure | |
Something Shameful | |
Chapter Eight The Plague of Sodomy | |
Theorizing | |
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 | |
Spanish Sodomy | |
A Portuguese Sodomite | |
Effeminacy in France | |
Counting Sodomites in Geneva | |
Sodomy and Criminal | |
PART FIVE Sodomy and the Enlightenment | |
PART SIX Victorian Secrets | |
Chapter Fourteen Modern Ethics | |
PART SEVEN New World Homophobia | |
Chapter Sixteen The Discord Young Men Feel | |
Chapter Seventeen In Fear of Fairies | |
PART EIGHT Normal Homosexuals | |
Chapter Nineteen Hit Them Hit Back | |
Chapter Twenty American Masculinity | |
Chapter Twentyone A Panic Close to Madness | |
Epilogue The Last Acceptable Prejudice | |
ALSO BY BYRNE FONE | |
INDEX | |
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Common terms and phrases
abnormal abominable accused activity Aeschines American ancient antihomosexual antisodomy argues Aristophanes Arnald asserts Bailey beauty Boswell boys burned called Callicratidas century Charicles Christian Church cinaedi committed Common Era condemned crime death defined described Don Leon effeminacy effeminate engaged England English eromenos erotic fear female friendship Ganymede gender Greece Greek Greenberg 1988 heresy heretics heterosexual homoerotic homoeroticism homophobia homophobic homosexual acts homosexual behavior homosexual desire Ibid insists intercourse invented John John Addington Symonds Juvenal Katz King lesbian Leviticus Lind literature lover lust Lycinus male manly marriage masculine Maurice medieval Misgolas moral nature pagan passion passive homosexual pederasty penitentials persecution perversion Plato pleasure poem poet practice prejudice Press promiscuity prostitutes punishment relationships religious Renaissance Roman Rome same-sex satire sexual acts sinners sins social society sodomy story Strutwell suggests Symonds texts Timarchus translation unnatural Verniolle vice Viegas Visigothic Whitman woman women writing York young youth