Table of Contents

• Preface
  
• Acknowledgments
  
• Chapter 1. Straight Thinking on Some Not-So-Straightforward Matters
  
• Getting Our Bearings
  
• How Shall We Think of Religion?
  
• What of Homosexuality?
  
• Chapter 2. Holy Homosexuality: Of Men and Semen
  
• The Sambians of Papua New Guinea: It Will Make a Man of You
  
• The Taoists of Ancient China and the Preservation of Life
  
• Chapter 3. Holy Homoeroticism: Splendid Men and Splendor Divine
  
• Plato and the World of Ancient Athens
  
• The Platonism of Islamic Sufism
  
• Chapter 4. Holy Effeminacy: The Native American Berdache As Living War Charm
  
• Men and Manhood
  
• Berdaches: Third-Gendered Persons or Unmanned Men?
  
• Chapter 5. Holy Homophobia in the Hebrew Scriptures
  
• Homophobia and the Fear of Exile
  
• The Fear of Death: Anal Intercourse As Unsafe Sex
  
• The Fear of Disorder: Homosexual Sex As Deformity
  
• Alien Worship, Enemy Ways in War
  
• Whose Body Is It Anyway?
  
• Chapter 6. Early Christianity: A Revolution Aborted?
  
• Paul: Food, Sex, Sin, and Taste
  
• Augustine of Hippo: Sex, Homosexuality, Faith, and Death
  
• Chapter 7. The Variegated Lotus: Homosexual Sex and Historical Buddhism
  
• The Nirvanic Transcendence of Desire
  
• Enlightenment and Homosexual Sex in Japan and Tibet
  
• Chapter 8. Struggles on the American Front
  
• A Gay Agenda? And the Social Good
  
• Gay Rights As a Freedom of Religion Issue
  
• The Spiritual Challenge of Contemporary Homophile Movements
  
• Toward a New Poetic of Masculinity
  
• Notes
  
• Bibliography
  
• Index
  

About the Author

Ronald E. Long is Assistant Professor of Religion at Hunter College of the City University of New York. His essays have appeared in The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, The Journal of Men's Studies and The Journal of the American Academy of Religion.

Reviews

"Important....A timely, accessible, and valuable resource not only for gay and bisexual men but for everyone concerned with the interlocking questions of religion, gender, and violence."