First published March 30, 2005, in the Chicago Free Press.
Back in 1999 a group called the Publishing Triangle issued a list of what they considered the best 100 books of gay and lesbian fiction. Some of the choices were eccentric, many were second rate and the list seemed too politically correct, but if it prompted people to read some gay fiction it had some value.
Then last June they issued an equally eccentric list of the 100 best gay non-fiction books. Always eager to be helpful, just as I offered a gratifyingly shorter list of the 10 best gay fiction back then, I belatedly offer my own list of the 10 best non-fiction books relevant to homosexuality.
Alfred C. Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and its female sequel (1953) seem to be classics no one reads. But the long chapters in each book on homosexuality as well as the rest of the books are valuable reading for what Kinsey actually said as opposed to what people think he said. And Kinsey shows a deeply humane concern for the meaning of sex in people's lives and all varieties of sexual expression.
Stephen O. Murray's American Gay (1996) offers a comprehensive sociological analysis of the reasons for the development of group awareness by gays and the subsequent growth and diversification of the gay community as "a quasi-ethnic group." Murray also explores the issues of sexual promiscuity, the community response to AIDS, the formation of same-sex couples and ethnic gay communities.
Of the many books on gay history, Louis Crompton's magisterial Homosexuality and Civilization (2003) is clearly the best and most exhaustive. Beautifully written and illustrated, the book traces the oppression and resilience of gays and lesbians from the ancient Jews and Greeks, through the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, up to modern times, correcting the accounts of John Boswell and Michel Foucault among others.
C.A. Tripp's The Homosexual Matrix (1975, enlarged 1987) remains the most insightful book on the psychological origin and expression of homosexual orientation and desire. Like his mentor Kinsey, Tripp harshly dismisses Freud and clearly explains the futility of all change therapy - since there is no "illness" to "cure" and desire is resistant to change. He also discusses the psychology of gay relationships, sexual interaction and effeminacy, laying waste to a host of stereotypes in the process.
With a title taken from President Clinton, Bruce Bawer's A Place at the Table (1993) stakes out a gay-assertive middle ground between the religious right and the deconstructionist left, insisting on the full acceptance of gays in the American community. Bawer does not argue for an identity-sacrificing "assimilation" but for a welcoming social "inclusion" in which gay people can contribute their own perspectives.
Stephen Murray's Homosexualities (2000) is the anthropological counterpart to his sociological American Gay, a wide-ranging survey of just about everything currently known about same-sex relationships in scores of other cultures and societies. Murray develops a useful typology of the predominant gay relationships in different societies - in which partners are differentiated by age or by gender roles or are egalitarian.
Because homosexuality cannot be understood without understanding sexuality itself - and most heterosexuals don't, and too many don't want to, which is part of our problem - there are a few books on sexuality generally that must be included in the gay top 10.
Murray S. Davis's cheekily titled Smut (1983) is the most fascinating book on sex you'll ever read. Rejecting the idea of sexual desire as instinctive, Davis explores the conceptual and experiential sources of desire. He examines the effect of sex on people's perceptions of the self and partner as well as the different sexual ideologies of religious conservatives, "naturalists," and liberationists - explaining, among much else, conservative fears of contamination by other people's sexual behavior (e.g., homophobia). A great book, unaccountably obscure.
Richard Posner's Sex and Reason (1992) uses an economic, rational choice model to stress the volitional elements that influence sexual behavior and social policy on topics such as sexual regulations, homosexuality, marriage, pornography, reproduction and the sexual revolution. The approach produces surprising insights and gay-supportive conclusions.
Paul Robinson's The Modernization of Sex (1976) is an insightful reading of Havelock Ellis, Alfred C. Kinsey, and Masters and Johnson to bring to light their fundamental premises and contribution to modern ideas about sex. Robinson omits Freud, but best critique of Freud's obsolete, tangled myth-making is Ernest Gellner's patient demolition, The Psychoanalytic Movement (1985, revised 1993).
That's nine books. For the 10th choose any one from eight runner-ups: Jonathan Rauch's Gay Marriage, Ronald Bayer's Homosexuality and American Psychiatry, Bruce Bagemihl's Biological Exuberance, Richard Mohr's Gays/Justice, John D'Emilio's Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On and Conduct Unbecoming, and Andrew Sullivan's Virtually Normal.
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