The confinement somehow helped me to stay away from society that did not tire of making me feel bad about my obvious homosexual condition in much of my youth. I am talking about the 80s, when things were seen from a very different point of view and to be homosexual in that time was the worst. In , homosexual acts were illegal in every state except Illinois.
Homosexual acts come naturally to them, heterosexual acts do not. Homosexual conduct between consenting adults is legal in Turkey, but far from accepted. Homosexual intimacies between girls are far more often platonic than similar intimacies between boys. Homosexual Eros has a different finality than heterosexual Eros. Homosexual choice of object is originally more natural to narcism than the heterosexual.
Homosexual love has played a much greater part in the world's history than is generally believed. Homosexual practices everywhere flourish and abound in prisons. Usage of Homosexual Adjective The adjective homosexual has been decreasing in use in published, edited text since the late 20th century, and is now sometimes considered offensive, since the word can be seen as evoking negative stereotypes and outdated clinical understandings of homosexuality as a psychiatric condition. Usage of Homosexual Noun The noun homosexual has seen a decrease in use in published, edited text since the mids and is now often regarded as offensive, since the word can be seen as evoking negative stereotypes and outdated clinical understandings of homosexuality as a psychiatric condition.
Examples of homosexual in a Sentence Recent Examples on the Web: Adjective However, the version of the film screened in those countries will remove scenes featuring any intimacy between characters — both heterosexual and homosexual relationships, Deadline reported. Toklas, and Gore Vidal. First Known Use of homosexual Adjective , in the meaning defined at sense 1 Noun , in the meaning defined above.
Learn More About homosexual. Time Traveler for homosexual The first known use of homosexual was in See more words from the same year. Style: MLA. English Language Learners Definition of homosexual.
Medical Definition of homosexual Entry 1 of 2. Medical Definition of homosexual Entry 2 of 2. Get Word of the Day daily email! Test Your Vocabulary. Test your visual vocabulary with our question challenge! Love words? A reasonable place to begin is with the dialogues of Plato, for this is where some of the central ideas are first articulated, and, significantly enough, are immediately applied to the sexual domain.
For the Sophists, the human world is a realm of convention and change, rather than of unchanging moral truth. Plato, in contrast, argued that unchanging truths underpin the flux of the material world. Reality, including eternal moral truths, is a matter of phusis. Even though there is clearly a great degree of variety in conventions from one city to another something ancient Greeks became increasingly aware of , there is still an unwritten standard, or law, that humans should live under.
In the Laws , Plato applies the idea of a fixed, natural law to sex, and takes a much harsher line than he does in the Symposium or the Phraedrus. In Book Eight, the Athenian speaker considers how to have legislation banning homosexual acts, masturbation, and illegitimate procreative sex widely accepted.
He then states that this law is according to nature —d. Plato clearly sees same-sex passions as especially strong, and hence particularly problematic, although in the Symposium that erotic attraction is presented as potentially being a catalyst for a life of philosophy, rather than base sensuality Cf. Dover, , —; Nussbaum, , esp. Other figures played important roles in the development of natural law theory. Aristotle, in his approach, did allow for change to occur according to nature, and therefore the way that natural law is embodied could itself change with time, which was an idea Aquinas later incorporated into his own natural law theory.
Aristotle did not write extensively about sexual issues, since he was less concerned with the appetites than Plato. Probably the best reconstruction of his views places him in mainstream Greek society as outlined above; his main concern is with an active versus a passive role, with only the latter problematic for those who either are or will become citizens.
Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was, according to his contemporaries, only attracted to men, and his thought did not have prohibitions against same-sex sexuality. In contrast, Cicero, a later Stoic, was dismissive about sexuality in general, with some harsher remarks towards same-sex pursuits Cicero, , The most influential formulation of natural law theory was made by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century.
Integrating an Aristotelian approach with Christian theology, Aquinas emphasized the centrality of certain human goods, including marriage and procreation.
While Aquinas did not write much about same-sex sexual relations, he did write at length about various sex acts as sins. For Aquinas, sexuality that was within the bounds of marriage and which helped to further what he saw as the distinctive goods of marriage, mainly love, companionship, and legitimate offspring, was permissible, and even good.
Aquinas did not argue that procreation was a necessary part of moral or just sex; married couples could enjoy sex without the motive of having children, and sex in marriages where one or both partners is sterile perhaps because the woman is postmenopausal is also potentially just given a motive of expressing love. For example, a Thomist could embrace same-sex marriage, and then apply the same reasoning, simply seeing the couple as a reproductively sterile, yet still fully loving and companionate union.
Aquinas, in a significant move, adds a requirement that for any given sex act to be moral it must be of a generative kind. The only way that this can be achieved is via vaginal intercourse. That is, since only the emission of semen in a vagina can result in natural reproduction, only sex acts of that type are generative, even if a given sex act does not lead to reproduction, and even if it is impossible due to infertility.
The consequence of this addition is to rule out the possibility, of course, that homosexual sex could ever be moral even if done within a loving marriage , in addition to forbidding any non-vaginal sex for opposite-sex married couples. What is the justification for this important addition?
This question is made all the more pressing in that Aquinas does allow that how broad moral rules apply to individuals may vary considerably, since the nature of persons also varies to some extent. Unfortunately, Aquinas does not spell out a justification for this generative requirement. The first is that sex acts that involve either homosexuality, heterosexual sodomy, or which use contraception, frustrate the purpose of the sex organs, which is reproductive.
It has, however, come in for sharp attack see Weitham, , and the best recent defenders of a Thomistic natural law approach are attempting to move beyond it e. If their arguments fail, of course, they must allow that some homosexual sex acts are morally permissible even positively good , although they would still have resources with which to argue against casual gay and straight sex.
Although the specifics of the second sort of argument offered by various contemporary natural law theorists vary, they possess common elements Finnis, ; George, a. As Thomists, their argument rests largely upon an account of human goods. The two most important for the argument against homosexual sex though not against homosexuality as an orientation which is not acted upon, and hence in this they follow official Catholic doctrine; see George, a, ch.
Personal integration, in this view, is the idea that humans, as agents, need to have integration between their intentions as agents and their embodied selves. Hence, natural law theorists respond that sexual union in the context of the realization of marriage as an important human good is the only permissible expression of sexuality. Natural law theorists, if they want to support their objection to homosexual sex, have to emphasize procreation.
If, for example, they were to place love and mutual support for human flourishing at the center, it is clear that many same-sex couples would meet this standard. Hence their sexual acts would be morally just. There are, however, several objections that are made against this account of marriage as a central human good. Sex in an opposite-sex marriage where the partners know that one or both of them are sterile is not done for procreation.
Yet surely it is not wrong. Why, then, is homosexual sex in the same context a long-term companionate union wrong Macedo, ? The natural law rejoinder is that while vaginal intercourse is a potentially procreative sex act, considered in itself though admitting the possibility that it may be impossible for a particular couple , oral and anal sex acts are never potentially procreative, whether heterosexual or homosexual George, a.
But is this biological distinction also morally relevant, and in the manner that natural law theorists assume? Natural law theorists, in their discussions of these issues, seem to waver. On the one hand, they want to defend an ideal of marriage as a loving union wherein two persons are committed to their mutual flourishing, and where sex is a complement to that ideal.
Yet that opens the possibility of permissible gay sex, or heterosexual sodomy, both of which they want to oppose. Then, when accused of being reductive, they move back to the broader ideal of marriage. Natural law theory, at present, has made significant concessions to mainstream liberal thought.
In contrast certainly to its medieval formulation, most contemporary natural law theorists argue for limited governmental power, and do not believe that the state has an interest in attempting to prevent all moral wrongdoing. They also argue against same sex marriage Bradley, ; George, b. There have been some attempts, however, to reconcile natural law theory and homosexuality see, for example, Lago, ; Goldstein, While maintaining the central aspects of natural law theory and its account of basic human goods, they typically either argue that marriage itself is not a basic good Lago , or that the sort of good it is, when understood in a less narrow, dogmatic fashion, is such that same-sex couples can enjoy it.
With the rise of the gay liberation movement in the post-Stonewall era, overtly gay and lesbian perspectives began to be put forward in politics, philosophy and literary theory. Initially these often were overtly linked to feminist analyses of patriarchy e.
Yet in the late s and early s queer theory was developed, although there are obviously important antecedents which make it difficult to date it precisely. Sticking with the example used above, of a specific conceptualization of lesbian identity, it denigrates women who are sexually and emotionally attracted to other women, yet who do not fit the description.
What may be of utmost importance, for example, for a black lesbian is her lesbianism, rather than her race. Many gays and lesbians of color attacked this approach, accusing it of re-inscribing an essentially white identity into the heart of gay or lesbian identity Jagose, Such a view, however, largely because of arguments developed within poststructuralism, seemed increasingly untenable. The key figure in the attack upon identity as ahistorical is Michel Foucault. In a series of works he set out to analyze the history of sexuality from ancient Greece to the modern era , , Although the project was tragically cut short by his death in , from complications arising from AIDS, Foucault articulated how profoundly understandings of sexuality can vary across time and space, and his arguments have proven very influential in gay and lesbian theorizing in general, and queer theory in particular Spargo, ; Stychin, One of the reasons for the historical review above is that it helps to give some background for understanding the claim that sexuality is socially constructed, rather than given by nature.
Although the gender of the partner was more important in the medieval than in the ancient view, the broader theological framework placed the emphasis upon a sin versus refraining-from-sin dichotomy. It is difficult to perceive a common, natural sexuality expressed across these three very different cultures.
The examples can be pushed much further by incorporating anthropological data outside of the Western tradition Halperin, ; Greenberg, Yet even within the narrower context offered here, the differences between them are striking.
The assumption in ancient Greece was that men less is known about Greek attitudes towards women can respond erotically to either sex, and the vast majority of men who engaged in same-sex relationships were also married or would later become married. Yet the contemporary understanding of homosexuality divides the sexual domain in two, heterosexual and homosexual, and most heterosexuals cannot respond erotically to their own sex.
In saying that sexuality is a social construct, these theorists are not saying that these understandings are not real. Since persons are also constructs of their culture in this view , we are made into those categories. Hence today persons of course understand themselves as straight or gay or perhaps bisexual , and it is very difficult to step outside of these categories, even once one comes to see them as the historical constructs they are.
Instead it is purely relational, standing as an undefined term that gets its meaning precisely by being that which is outside of the norm, however that norm itself may be defined. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers.
By lacking any essence, queer does not marginalize those whose sexuality is outside of any gay or lesbian norm, such as sado-masochists. Finally, it incorporates the insights of poststructuralism about the difficulties in ascribing any essence or non-historical aspect to identity. This central move by queer theorists, the claim that the categories through which identity is understood are all social constructs rather than given to us by nature, opens up a number of analytical possibilities.
For example, queer theorists examine how fundamental notions of gender and sex which seem so natural and self-evident to persons in the modern West are in fact constructed and reinforced through everyday actions, and that this occurs in ways that privilege heterosexuality Butler, , The fluidity of categories created through queer theory even opens the possibility of new sorts of histories that examine previously silent types of affections and relationships Carter, Another critical perspective opened up by a queer approach, although certainly implicit in those just referred to, is especially important.
Since most anti-gay and lesbian arguments rely upon the alleged naturalness of heterosexuality, queer theorists attempt to show how these categories are themselves deeply social constructs. An example helps to illustrate the approach. In an essay against gay marriage, chosen because it is very representative, James Q. In contrast, he puts forward loving, monogamous marriage as the natural condition of heterosexuality. Heterosexuality, in his argument, is an odd combination of something completely natural yet simultaneously endangered.
One is born straight, yet this natural condition can be subverted by such things as the presence of gay couples, gay teachers, or even excessive talk about homosexuality. If gayness is radically different, it is legitimate to suppress it. It is a common move in queer theory to bracket, at least temporarily, issues of truth and falsity Halperin, Instead, the analysis focuses on the social function of discourse.
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