BOOKS

Notices and reviews of books, articles, plays and poetry dealing with homosexuality and the sex variant. Readers are invited to send in reviews or printed matter for review.

BDUL

SEX WAYS-IN FACT AND FAITH: Bases for Christian Family Policy. Edited by Evelyn M. Duvall, Ph.D. and Sylvanus M. Duvall, Ph.D., Association Press, New York, 253 pp.

It is now well-known that religion in the Hebrew-Christian tradition was hostile to sex especially in any deviational form. Doubtless in the early stages of Hebrew history, this attitude had some functional utility in the need for a more extensive population to compete with neighboring and hostile tribes. But by the time Christianity had become a recognized institution of society, the hostility had hardened into a tradition which made a virtue of celibacy and chastity even though family procreation became one of the chief sources of recruitment of new members. The Protestant Reformation abandoned celibacy for the clergy, but the Renaissance with its central and far-reaching emphasis upon rationality has had practically no effect upon the religious attitude. toward sex until our own times.

The book under consideration represents a very real attempt to deal with sex problems rationally in a Christian setting. It purports to be a guide for study and discussion to assist Christian leaders everywhere to find answers to the perplexing problems of contemporary life, that is, to develop a Christian policy of sexual behavior. The fifteen chapters, each

one

by a distinguished scholar in the field. cover just about every aspect of the sex life and are mostly short, concise, and factual, written in a textbook rather than a literary style. Many annotated references are given as material for continued, wider study.

The chapter, Homosexuality, was written by Dr. Evelyn Hooker, and gives a neat summary of the studies in the field drawing only the conclusion that homosexuals are not different from heterosexuals except in the one aspect of sexual preference. She tactfully avoids any moral or ethical prescription.

Throughout the book the authors, wisely perhaps, touch lightly the subject of policy making and the char-. acterizing of specific acts as right or wrong, quite in contrast to the older religious teaching. One might wish, however, that some criteria for ethical or moral judgment might have been given, such, for example, as Dr. Archie J. Balm presents in his What Makes Acts Right. The transition from facts to norms of behavior is never easy and the arbitrary or traditional proscription of specific acts by churches in the past has so often elevated the trivial at the expense of the essential that perhaps it is wise to leave to individual counsellors specific recommendations made in the light of actual conditions and circumstances. The book thus becomes invaluable in giving a scholarly and

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