An American Obsession

December 13, 1999
In this persuasively argued social history, Terry, an associate professor of comparative studies at Ohio State University, contends that homosexuality "has acquired a symbolic centrality in American culture" as a dominant marker between the "normal" and the "abnormal" across a diverse range of disciplines and milieus. Drawing upon a wide range of materials--from personal memoirs to legal cases, yellow journalism, pulp fiction, religious writings, psychology texts and "scientific" studies (which prove to be not all that scientific)--Terry demonstrates how, over the past 100 years, theories about the causes, nature and possible "cure" for homosexuality have focused far more on notions of sexuality, sin, gender and "social good" than on homosexuality itself. Analyzing the work of such 19th-century sexologists as Krafft-Ebing, Magnus Hirschfeld and Havelock Ellis, she illustrates how their na ve, often contradictory theories became so influential that they still inform contemporary thought, including "gay gene" studies and the religious beliefs and rhetoric of the Christian right. While her broad survey is vital to the book, Terry's real strength is her detailed explorations of individual groups--such as the Committee for the Study of Sex Variants, a multidisciplinary group of physicians and scientists who, in 1935, attempted to understand the "problem" of homosexuality on a scientific basis--and events, such as the harsh religious, psychoanalytic and cultural backlash against Kinsey's work in the early 1950s. Her exhaustively researched, astute synthesis is not only an original and important contribution to lesbian and gay studies, but sheds new light on the sociology of American life and the history of science.

January 1, 2000
By examining an array of medical and scientific texts published over the last two centuries, Terry (comparative studies, Ohio State Univ.) offers a detailed history of how it came to be that "Homosexuality, while socially stigmatized, has acquired a symbolic centrality in American culture, figuring as a scandalous transgression against which notions of normalcy, in a vast array of domains, are defined." Beginning with European scientific classificatory practices of the mid-1800s--which rendered homosexuals medically inferior--this "historian of effects" demonstrates the ways in which scientists shaped modern American ideas about the acceptable and the transgressive. She concludes with "a consideration of the legacy of etiological theories" of homosexuality. Terry's provocative account consistently goes beyond issues of race, class, gender, education, and politics to analyze the agendas of various groups and the implications of their obsession for all Americans. Recommended for subject collections.--James E. Van Buskirk, San Francisco P.L.

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