Reclaiming Sodom

"Reclaiming Sodom" surveys how the view of homosexual activities as socially dangerous has been perpetuated by the state, the church, the law and other institutions. The collection covers a wide range, from biblical scholarship, to the legal mobilization towards the catagory of sodomy in 18th- and 19th-century England, to an analysis of the ways in which the Judeo-Christian tradition has shaped anthropological accounts of same-sex practices of non-western people. This text explores alternatives to the force of the Sodomitic biblical narrative in Islamic, western and non-western traditions, and discusses ways in which sodomy calls into question definitions of gender and sexuality. The collection examines the relations between sex/gender identities and sexual acts, and argues for the political usefulness of both Sodom and sodomy. It makes a contribution to literature on sexuality and gender, as well as the nature of sex in our culture.