The Source: Volume 1, Issue 3, June 1998

The Source: Volume 1, Issue 3, June 1998

New College Textbooks

Choices in Sexuality
Susan McCammon, David Knox, and Caroline Schacht
1993, West Publishing Company
ISBN# 0-314-0-1267-2
To order, contact: ITP, P.O. Box 6904, Florence, KY 41022; Phone: 606/647-5023; Web site: http://www.thompson.com; $67.95.
This text contains six sections: 1) making sexual choices; 2) background for sexual choices; 3) context of sexual choices; 4) enhancement of sexual choices; 5) health choices; and 6) reproductive choices. Each chapter includes an inventory for self-assessment. The text also includes the research, theoretical, historical, and public policy concerns of each topic.

Human Sexuality in a World of Diversity, Third Edition
Spencer A. Rathus, Jeffrey S. Nevid, and Lois Fichner-Rathus
1997, Allyn and Bacon
ISBN# 0-205-20018-4
To order, contact: Prentice Hall. Inc., 200 Old Tappan Rd., Old Tappan, NJ 07675; Phone: 800-445-6991; Fax: 800/922-0579; $64.00.
This text integrates multicultural and multiethnic perspectives throughout the text and details the range of cultural differences in human sexual experiences--both around the world and the U.S. society. This updated edition includes a section where students can reflect on ideas presented in the text.

Our Sexuality, Sixth Edition
Robert Crooks and Karla Baur
1996, Brooks/Cole Publishing Company
ISBN# 0-534-32094-5
To order, contact: ITP, P.O. Box 6904, Florence, KY 41022; Phone: 606/647-5023; Web site: http://www.thompson.com ; $66.95.
This text offers a comprehensive introduction to the biological, psychosocial, behavioral, and cultural aspects of sexuality. It explores gender roles, sexuality throughout the life cycle, cross-cultural variations on sexual expression, chronic illness, and disability and sexuality.

Sexuality Education: Theory and Practice, 3rd Edition
Clint E. Bruess, Jerrold S. Greenberg
1994; Wm. C. Brown Communications, Inc.;
ISBN 0-697-17124-8
To order contact: McGraw Hill Customer Service, P.O. Box 545, Black Lick, OH 43004; Phone: 800/338-3987; Fax: 614/755-5645; $52.93.
This is a comprehensive textbook of sexuality education. It is divided into six sections: "Introduction to Sexuality Education," "Instituting and Expanding Sexuality Education Programs," "Biological, Psychological, and Sociological Aspects of Sexuality Education," "Sexual Decision Making," "Conducting Sexuality Education," and "Evaluation and Research." Many teaching strategies and educational activities are presented.

Sexual Interactions, Forth Edition
Elizabeth and Albert Allgeier
1995, D.C. Heath and Company
ISBN# 0-669-33337-9
To order, contact: Houghton Mifflin Company, P.O. Box 7050, Wilmington, MA 01887; Phone: 800/225-1463; Fax: 800/458-9501; Web site: http://www.hmco.com; $66.76.
This text provides readers with a broad historical and cross-cultural perspective for re-examining assumptions, contemporary attitudes, and beliefs about sexuality. It combines a research-based perspective on sexuality and relationships with practical advice on sexual intimacy. Each chapter ends with a concise summary and self-test questions.

Sexuality Today: The Human Perspective, Sixth Edition
Gary F. Kelly
1998, McGraw-Hill
ISBN# 0-697-29430-7
To order contact: McGraw Hill, P.O. Box 545, Blacklick, OH 43004; Phone: 800/338-3987; Fax: 614/755-5645; $37.81.
This text examines sexuality with an emphasis on current issues and controversies. It includes questions about personal health, exercises on self-awareness, and devices to help the readers clarify their values and understand their own sexuality.

Understanding Human Sexuality, Sixth Edition
Janet Shibley Hyde and John DeLamater
1997, McGraw-Hill
ISBN# 0-07-031802-6
To order contact: McGraw Hill, P.O. Box 545, Blacklick, OH 43004; Phone: 800/338-3987; Fax: 614/755-5645; $71.50.
This text assumes that readers have had no prior college courses in biology, psychology, or sociology. It is designed to provide students with practical information, to help them feel more comfortable when talking and thinking about sexuality, and to help them understand methods used in researching sexual behavior.

Your Sexuality: A Self Assessment, Third Edition
Robert F. Valois and Sandra K. Kammermann
1997, McGraw Hill
ISBN# 0-07-066853-1
To order, contact: McGraw Hill, P.O. Box 545, Blacklick, OH 43004; Phone: 800-338-3987; Fax: 614/755-5645; $28.88.
This text is designed to supplement current sexuality textbooks. It includes a series of exercises to help students evaluate their sexual attitudes and behaviors. It is organized into six topics: individual perspectives, biology, behavior, development, variations/complications, and health/reproduction.

Book Reviews

(Previously Published in the SIECUS Report)

The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind (follow link to order book - In association with Amazon.com)
Reverend Peter Gomes
William Morrow & Company, Inc.
New York, NY
1996, 383 pp.
$25.00/hardcover

The Good Book is a thought-provoking explication of the Bible. In it, Reverend Gomes, who has been the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard University since 1974, introduces the reader to the world of semantics, theories, and interpretation as they relate to the Bible. He sets the stage for this discussion by stating that biblical literacy is extremely rare in our country and that there is a real need to reconceptualize how the Bible fits in our modern lives.

Gomes explains that the Bible is an essential document dealing with the intimate relationship between human beings and God. He discusses the ever-evolving role of the Bible in American politics and culture and how the interpretations of the Bible have changed over the centuries. He urges the reader to understand the culture and climate of the time in each interpretation. In the process, he warns the reader about literalism, fidelity to the written word; bibliolatry, raising the Bible to the status of an idol; and culturism, a term he coined to explain biblical application to support current cultural biases.

He urges readers to remember theologian Malcolm Tolbert’s message: that one of the most fundamental mistakes people make in reading the Bible is to assume that the structures and the systems it describes are as sacred and authoritative as the principles it affirms.

The Good Book is divided into three sections: "Opening the Bible" relates the Bible to interpretations and the usage of those interpretations in America; "The Use and Abuse of the Bible" is an historical account of the application of the Bible to explain how it has been used to oppress certain groups; and "The True and Lively Word" approaches issues such as wealth, the good life, evil, science, and joy. It explains to the reader how to make the Bible part of everyday living.

Reverend Gomes offers readers an opportunity to consider the Bible as an instrument of inclusiveness, opening the door for those who have suffered discrimination at its hands through its misuse.

The publication extends an invitation to gays, lesbians, African-Americans, and women who are trying to make sense of the Bible to embark in the search of a good life while using it as a guide.

Reviewed by Felix Gardon
This review appeared in SIECUS Report, vol. 26, no. 1.

Now That I’m Out, What Do I Do?: Thoughts on Living Deliberately (follow link to order book - In association with Amazon.com)
Brian McNaught
St. Martin’s Press
New York, NY
1997, 205 pp.
$22.95/hardcover

Dancing Around the Volcano Freeing Our Erotic Lives: Decoding the Enigma of Gay Men and Sex (follow link to order book - In association with Amazon.com)
Guy Kettelhack
Three Rivers Press
New York, NY
1996, 178 pp.
$12.00/paperback ed.

At first glance, these two books may appear to have nothing much in common. But, in fact, they have many common elements. Both address coming-out issues. Both McNaught and Kettlehack are health and sexuality educators. Both are openly gay men. Both recount personal stories of coming out. Both speak as seasoned denizens of gay neighborhoods of major urban areas. Both are white, middle class (by their own admission) and educated. Both have written books and addressed a wide array of audiences on gay life. Both tell of great personal loss in the first decade of the HIV epidemic, and both acknowledge that this loss continues to have a profound effect on their world view. And finally, both books focus on each author’s search for a "healthy sexuality" as a gay person. And, yet, despite all of these similarities, these books offer very different perspectives and views on just what this means.

McNaught’s book starts with personal anecdotes about coming out and his experiences as an Irish Catholic "choir boy" discovering his sexuality. He explains the difficulty he has had throughout his life understanding how to develop a healthy sexuality. "What is sexuality?" and "How does a sexually healthy gay person behave?" he asks. McNaught turns to SIECUS for some of his answers, quoting the SIECUS Position Statement on Sexuality Issues (1995), and basing his conclusions on some of the definitions found there. "The components of sexuality are the same for us all," he states, regardless of sexual orientation. He says SIECUS' definition of "sexually healthy" is "the ideal" and "a status to strive toward." He identifies the "enormous obstacles"—including secrecy, trauma, and ignorance—that stand in the way of people becoming sexually healthy. He provides illustrations and addresses ways of overcoming each, which, he says, "is a lifelong trek, but one we need to make."

McNaught talks about the first time he went public when, as a young columnist in his twenties for a prominent Catholic newspaper, he tells a reporter from The Detroit News what it is like to be Catholic and gay. Much of the remainder of his book contains gay men’s stories that give insight into how to overcome obstacles to being out and sexually healthy. He writes about the freedom a person experiences when being gay is no longer a "dirty little secret." He tells us about his allies and friends in the straight community who have helped him along the way, and gently challenges the gay person to come out and begin forging a path to health, happiness, and equality. He argues strongly for legally recognized gay and lesbian marriages, and allows that, once secured, this may not be a choice exercised by all gay people.

Kettelhack also begins his book with personal anecdotes of coming out. But he begins his story much later in life. He only starts awakening to the fullness of his gay sexuality in his forties. He describes a revelation he had during a sexual experience with a stranger while visiting a New York safe-sex club in 1990. He explains that, at that moment, he realized for the first time that he could enjoy being gay and being sexual without secrecy, emotional pain, needless guilt, or the use of drugs and alcohol.

Both McNaught and Kettelhack tell of "coming out." But for Kettelhack this "coming out" is a spiritual awakening to his sexual self that occurs years after he identifies with being gay. For McNaught, this "coming out" is a spiritual journey from the start: finding his true self as a spiritual, sexual, emotional, and political being.

Kettelhack uses many references to contemporary and classical scholarship in human sexuality to reflect on his own and his friends’ development as gay men and as healthy sexual beings. His basic assumptions are provocative. Kettelhack argues that gay men see themselves as "Jekylls and Hydes": "Jekyll, the sensitive, caring, responsible, aboveboard public me; Hyde, the dark, sexual, amoral beast." Kettelhack calls on gay men to free themselves of this duality. "We are stained and fallible and full of contradictions: The components of our sexual and emotional and mental lives, of our backgrounds, of the effects on us of genetics and hormones and culture, all stud us with fruits and nuts that are, in the end, irreconcilable."

Urban gay white men will probably see themselves in one or another of these two life experiences. For some of us, the long journey to becoming healthy, happy gay men began the day we took that first step out of the closet and found a somewhat supportive environment in our neighborhoods or among our friends and families. For the rest of us, the journey may have taken years before we addressed the secrecy, shame, the substance abuse, and trauma that often surrounded our experience of growing up different. It may have taken even longer before we were then able to fully express our sexual selves, by enjoying sex, embracing our sexuality, and considering ourselves on the road to being sexually healthy.

I recommend both books. They provide thought-provoking questions into the nature of sexuality and the particular expression urban gay white men in the twentieth century have given to it. Each brings a different and valuable perspective.

Reviewed by Christopher J. Portelli, J.D.
This review appeared in SIECUS Report, vol. 26, no. 4.

Sexuality and the Sacred, Sources for Theological Reflection (follow link to order book - In association with Amazon.com)
James B. Nelson and Sandra P. Longfellow, editors
Westminster/John Knox Press
Louisville, KY
1993, 406 pp.
$24.99/paperback

I have long searched for a validation of my beliefs that sexuality is a God-given gift and that churches throughout history had been responsible for many misunderstandings that have caused people to disconnect and to unfairly judge issues related to sexuality.

This book, Sexuality and the Sacred, Sources for Theological Reflection, is a series of essays by theologians who examine issues related to sexuality. It has helped me in my search.

The writers first discuss balancing the sources of the Bible to reach an understanding of sexuality. In the process, they introduce the concept that sexuality and spirituality are inseparable since both are avenues for people to connect in relationships.

They then discuss how, over time, sexuality and spirituality have separated from each other even though, at the present time, people are struggling to bring them back together. Eros, the personification of love in all its aspects, is distinguished from sex and erotica (described as only one paradigm for Eros). Sexism is compared to racism in interesting ways.

There is then a discussion of the sexual issues most divisive within churches today—those related to gender and sexual orientation. They point out that all people should receive full human affirmation and respect within their churches. They also suggest that there is difficulty in "hating the sin but loving the sinner."

In discussing AIDS, the writers show God as caring and sharing in pain and suffering. They say that ministries to people with AIDS, if they claim to reflect God’s concern, must tangibly show that God will not abandon people or a world in distress.

This book is an excellent resource for those still struggling to fit their personal sexuality into the context of a religious group, or those who are challenged by conservative religious families or acquaintances who are not open to new insights into the nature and will of God.

Reviewed by Elain L. Edge, M.S., a private consultant with Cutting Edge Educational Associates in Hot Springs Village, AR.
This review appeared in SIECUS Report, vol. 26, no. 1.

We Were Baptized Too: Claiming God’s Grace for Lesbians and Gays (follow link to order book - In association with Amazon.com) (follow link to order book - In association with Amazon.com)
Marilyn Bennett Alexander and James Preston
Westminster/John Knox Press
Louisville, K
1996, 139 pp.
$17.00

In his introduction to this excellent book, Desmond M. Tutu, Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, says:

"We claim that sexuality is a divine gift, which when used properly, helps us to become more fully human and akin really to God, as it is this part of our humanity that makes us more gentle and caring, more self-giving and concerned for others than we would be without that gift…

Why should we want all homosexual persons not to give expression to their sexuality in loving acts? Why don’t we use the same criteria to judge same-sex relationships that we use to judge whether heterosexual relationships are wholesome or not?…

I was left deeply disturbed by these inconsistencies and knew that the Lord of the Church would not be where his church is in this matter. Can we act quickly to let the gospel imperatives prevail as we remember our baptism and theirs, and be thankful?"

The authors—Marilyn Bennett Alexander, a consultant on community building and spiritual renewal at Southern Methodist University, and James Preston, an outreach coordinator for the Reconciling Congregation Program in Chicago—are gay and faithful to their churches. Yet, they have written a searing indictment of those churches that pledge to accept, love, forgive and nurture their newly baptized members while selectively forcing their lesbian and gay members into silence, alienation, and doubt. In the process, they have challenged churches to take seriously their understanding of baptism and communion as a means of grace, justice, and liberation.

The book is divided into five sections: "We Remember Our Baptism" (the authors talk about their faith); "Silenced: Stories of Exclusion and Pain" (others tell their stories); "Strangers: Stories of Judgment" (others discuss their isolation); "Do This in Remembrance of Us" (the authors talk about the importance of open gays and lesbians belonging to their church); and "And Be Thankful" (the authors talk about ways to work toward a church of inclusion).

One verse from the Bible describes the feeling of inclusion that the authors want form their church. It is: "So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God…" (Eph. 2:19).

Reviewed by Rachel T. Schoeder, a writer and consultant from Washington, DC.
This review appeared in SIECUS Report, vol. 26, no. 1.