Post on Chauncey and Bailey.

The account that Chauncey gives in Christian Brotherhood or Sexual Perversion? Homosexual Identities and the Construction of Sexual Boundaries in the World War One Era strikes me as funny because the same fighting that occurs in the anti-homosexual ranks today reared its head in as early as 1919! The creation of the subculture described by Chauncey is also quite fantastic. The battleground of choice? The local YMCA. One of the parts I'm unsure of is how "Relatively few of the men who engaged in homosexual activity, whether as casual participants... Or as partners in ongoing relationships, identified themselves or were labeled by others as sexually different from other men on that basis alone." This observation is a bit surprising as the naval authorities seemed to be quite zealous in their pursuit of gays. Then, the bombshell: some 'straight' guys apparently took part in these acts, but were gay only based on what role the man assumed! This came to be a battle between homosociality and homosexuality. In Bailey's Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition meanwhile, a well fought argument is advanced by Bailey that includes looking straight at the text that is so often cited as condemning homosexuals. Both texts gave a more or less balanced look at the issue of homosexuality in both religious and sexual contexts. Bailey's last sentence illustrates this as "This is not to say that homosexual acts may not... be sinful..." In the end, both texts served as eye-opening pieces which, more so in Bailey's case, advanced the cause of homosexuality while also illustrating the arguments against it and breaking them down.