This groundbreaking work draws on a vast range of research into human sexuality to demonstrate that homosexuality is not a phenomenon limited to a small minority of society, but is an aspect of a complex sexual harmony that the human race inherited from its animal ancestors. Through a survey of the patterns of sexual expression found among animals and among societies around the world, and an examination of the functional role homosexual behavior has played among animal species and human societies alike, the author arrives at some provocative conclusions: that a homosexual or bisexual phase is a normal part of sexual development, that same-sex relations play an important balancing role in regulating human reproduction, that many societies have institutionalized homosexual traditions in the past, and that the harsh condemnation of homosexuality in Western society is a relatively recent phenomenon, unique among world societies throughout history. This well researched and meticulously documented book is the first that integrates into a coherent picture the startling revelations about human sexuality coming from the recent work of sexual researchers, psychologists, anthropologists and historians. The view that emerges, of an ambisexual human species whose complex sexual harmony is being thwarted by the imposition of an artificial understanding of nature, represents a new way of thinking about sex.
Author(s): James Neill
Publisher: McFarland & Company
Year: 2011
Language: English
Pages: 478
City: Jefferson
Cover
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
Part I. The Inheritance of Nature
1. Against Nature? Homosexual Behavior in the Animal World
2. The Nature People
3. The Inheritance of Nature
Part II. Ambisexual Traditions in World Civilizations
4. Same-Sex Behavior at the Dawn of Civilization
5. Love Between Warriors
6. Greek Homosexuality: The Age of Heroes--Love-Inspired Valor
7. Greek Homosexuality: Educational Homosexuality in Classical Greece
8. Ambisexuality in Ancient Rome: Homosexual Customs in the Republic and Early Empire
9. Ambisexuality in Ancient Rome: The Christianized Empire and the Foundations of Western Homophobia
10. A Regal Love
11. Monks and Warriors
12. Homosexual Love in the World of Islam
Part III. Sexual Neurosis in Western Society
13. Medieval Europe: Sexual Tolerance in the Age of Chivalry
14. Medieval Europe: The Propagation of Neurosis
15. Authoritarian Religion versus Human Ambisexuality
16. Nature Out of Balance
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index
