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Recent advances in the study of homosexuality over the past ten years or so have fundamentally altered the understanding of same-sex erotic behavior in the social and health sciences. New studies in social history, sociology, anthropology, psychiatry, and clinical psychology have demonstrated that the forms of homosexual behavior are related to the historical and psychosocial conditions of humans. This new scholarship must itself be seen as a response to socioeconomic changes in Western society since World War II, including the rise of the 1960s gay and feminist movements, the 1972 reclassification of homosexuality by the American Psychiatric Association, transformations in sexual behavior, the family, and the development of renewed scientific interest in sexual behavior across cultures. The aim of this article is to highlight and review these new findings, particularly from the perspective of anthropology.
Strong preconceptions of homosexuality include that it is always regarded as deviant or perverse; that it is rare or absent from most societies; or that, if it occurs, samesex behavior is stigmatized or punished. At the turn of the century, Freud challenged such views by suggesting that homosexual, activity occurred in various archaic and tribal societies.1 Even in Western society, Freud thought, sexual behavior was more heterogeneous than was believed. Freud's famous phrase, ''polymorphous perverse," was meant to indicate the potential of humans to manifest bisexual acts, which behaviors are, however, subject to social regulation.
After the war, Kinsey and his colleagues2 provided massive empirical evidence that supported this idea in their study of American society, specifically demonstrating that homosexual behavior was more prevalent in Americans, with 37% of all American males experiencing significant homosexual contact at some time in their lives. The effect of their work was to disengage "sex" from reproductive behavior, and to thus denote how homosexual/heterosexual dichotomies are more of an idealized cultural model than an empirical fact.
In cross-cultural studies, a similar point was made soon afterward in the classical study of Ford and Beach,3 who found that homosexual behavior was socially acceptable and normative for certain people in 64% of the 76 societies studied. Most recently, Carrier4 has gone further and divided cultures around the world into those which are approving, disapproving, or neutral with regard to homosexual acts. The point is that societies...