By Jeremy Patrick (jhaeman@hotmail.com)

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, v. 8 n. 5 (Sep.-Oct. 2001)

Discourse about homosexuality usually revolves around the question of whether it’s a "socially constructed" phenomenon or whether it has biological origins of some kind. Proponents of the former view sometimes hold that homosexuality is a recent invention that’s specific to a few Western societies.

A convincing refutation of that perspective is provided by Stephen O. Murray’s Homosexualities (University of Chicago Press). Murray is one of America’s pre-eminent scholars in the field of sexuality and the author of dozens of articles and books on the subject. His latest work demonstrates that what we call "homosexuality" exists in literally hundreds of societies around the world. Far from being a new or emerging pattern, according to Murray, homosexual behavior (and sometimes identity) has as long a history as heterosexual behavior in most cultures, and that homophobia is not a universal phenomenon.

Well-researched and packed with information, the book has a limited audience in mind. Aside from the author’s penchant for making cutting remarks about followers of Foucault, the writing is sober and even monotonous, as the author surveys one culture for a few pages before moving on to the next. There’s little real synthesis until the final chapter, which is rather technical and probably useful only for other social scientists. Nevertheless, Homosexualities provides a thorough history of its subject and will be a useful reference source for researchers.