Gilreath, Shannon. Sexual Politics: The Gay Person in America Today.

Friedman, Barry D.

Gilreath, Shannon. Sexual Politics: The Gay Person in America Today. Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 2006. 176 pages. Cloth, $42.95.

Shannon Gilreath, a law professor at Wake Forest University, explores the reasons why American society exhibits homophobia that is virtually unique in the modern Western world. He relates the Puritans' desire to establish a tightly controlled society in which behavior that ran afoul of biblical prohibitions would be harshly punished. Thwarted in England and Holland, the Puritans relocated to North America, where they were finally free to impose their intrusive theocratic rule. In so doing, they established a tradition of governmental interference in private affairs that has persisted in the United States to this day. Goaded by the Roman Catholic clergy and such fundamentalist ministers as the Reverend Jerry Falwell and the Reverend Pat Robertson, the American public responds to the solicitation for votes by conservative Republican politicians who promise such discriminatory measures as laws and constitutional amendments that disallow official recognition of same-sex marriage. Gilreath also identifies events that, from time to time, have worsened the precarious status of American gays, such as the rise of moralistic civic groups like New York City's Comstock Society (the Society for the Suppression of Vice), founded in 1872, and the allegations of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his chief counsel Roy Cohn that gay government officials are susceptible to blackmail and thus a threat to national security. As a consequence of the latter instance, gays and lesbians, pressed into military service during World War II by a nation badly in need of manpower, were expelled by the +military when the war ended, partially on the senseless rationale of being considered a threat to security.

In the struggle by gays for equal rights, the United States has experienced a see-saw pattern in which gays and lesbians assert their demands for equality and exploit occasional chance opportunities to make social and legal gains, such as finding a state supreme court that is receptive to gay-rights arguments, followed by a backlash led by hardnosed televangelists and political opportunists who tap into homophobic public sentiment to secure donations and votes and cause the progress of gay rights to stall. The certainty of the backlash and the degrading characterization in public discourse of gays and their personal relationships as unnatural and abhorrent discourage many demoralized gays from advocating for their own fundamental rights.

Gilreath is passionate in appealing to gays who have managed their exposure to discrimination and ridicule by concealing their sexual orientation to come out of the closet. He contends that the gay-rights movement needs many more advocates. He also believes that when gays who acknowledge their sexual orientation interact with heterosexuals, the result is usually a softening of anti-gay sentiment among the gays' acquaintances. The accumulation of an immense number of such forthright encounters, Gilreath contends, will undoubtedly increase public acceptance of gays and their aspirations for equal treatment under the law. Finally, he asserts that gays who are in the closet inhibit their ability to develop a healthy sense of self and fulfilling relationships with others. "... [T]he closet makes us each complicit in its dignity-robbing operations. Ultimate[ly], we make the choice to be other than we are, to remain less than whole; and through our deliberative complicity in the circle of dishonesty maintaining heterosexual dominance, the choice is, thereby, all the more wounding, the more devastating" (p. 24, emphasis preserved).

Gilreath's frustration, resentment, and anguish resulting from the mistreatment of gays in the United States are palpable in his rhetoric. This anger and hurt may cause discomfort for readers, but his blunt testimony is a useful reminder, in case one needs it, of the genuine damage that is done to members of the disadvantaged groups that American society has marginalized and oppressed. "Homosexuals remain the only minority against whom it is permissible to discriminate openly" (p. 48), Gilreath laments. Thus, in the effort to bring about equity and justice in the United States, redress of the mistreatment of gays is a major item of unfinished business.

Barry D. Friedman, Ph.D.

Professor of Political Science

North Georgia College & State University

Dahlonega, Georgia