L


Labeling
In social practice labeling is the habit of categorizing individuals with a descriptive epithet, generally negative, as "thief" or "shrew." The relevance of this concept to homosexuality stems from the argument that publicly labeling someone as a delinquent can result in the person's becoming the very thing he is at the outset perhaps fortuitously described as being. Naming has a powerful effect on the im­pressionable minds of young people - so much one can readily acknowledge. But the question can be pressed further: is the acquisition of a homosexual identity con­ditional upon being labeled queer (or whatever the abusive term is in the local idiom), or can it develop independently even before the individual is aware of the label that is affixed to his behavior? The internalization of a label that is repeatedly attached to an individual by one's peers certainly occurs, but there are other cases in which a future homosexual becomes aware of his orientation before he has learned that there are such people as "homosexuals." He may even think of himself as unique in the whole world. When the first writings on sexual inver­sion began to appear in the 1880s, their authors received letters from subjects who had reached middle age believing until then that their sexual orientation was shared by no one else, so effective had been the taboo on public discussion or even oblique mention of the subject of sexual activity between members of the same sex.
Sociological studies have shown how intimately men or boys can be in­volved in a specific homosexual subcul­ture (to be sure, one with little or no political consciousness) without consid­ering themselves in the category of "queers." The preponderance of married men in Laud Humphreys' study of sexual contacts in toilets, Tearoom Trade (Chi­cago, 1970), and celebrated cases in which highly conservative public figures have been compromised, bear witness to this split between objective behavior and the subject's self-concept. Moreover, "homo­sexual" is an ambiguous term: it can be applied to a wide range of individuals, including ones who have had but a single overt same-sex experience, or limited to those who have never had heterosexual experiences or even feelings. Even "bisex­ual" may be disavowed as a label by indi­viduals who have had more than inciden­tal experience with both sexes, but none­theless perceive their "identity" as hetero­sexual or homosexual.
Homosexuality has been studied in anthropology and sociology as an as­cribed status which in turn provides a complex of culturally prescribed roles and behavior which individuals are expected to learn and perform. Because homosexual roles and behaviors are conceived as inap­propriate to the individual's genital sex, they have been theoretically defined as deviant. AllisonDavis stated in 1941: "Sex-typing of behavior and privileges is even more rigid and lasting in our society than is age-typing. Indeed, sexual status and color-caste status are the only life-long forms of rank. Whereas sexual mobility is somewhat less rare today than formerly, sex-inappropriate behavior, social or physi­cal, is still one of the most severely pun­ished infractions of our social code." In a society that j udges such behavior immoral, individuals labeled homosexual are frequently denied the social, economic, and legal rights of so-called normal human beings,- they may be the objects of scorn, ridicule, aversion, and fear, and suffer denial of employment or interrogation and ha­rassment by the police.
Labeling can be triggered by an individual who is observed to behave in a manner deviating from the behaviors held in common by members of the group to which he belongs. There are differences between the sexes in this regard: unlike stereotypically effeminate appearance and gestures in boys (sissihood), "masculine" appearance in girls (tomboyishness) is less likely to be interpreted as predictive of homosexuality. But when a youngster is so labeled, then even the slightest devia­tion from the norm can be noticed and magnified in the image that others hold of him. Another class of evidence is overt sexual propositions, which may consist of a series of verbal or physical cues that are deemed progressively inappropriate. Retro­spective reinterpretation of the deviant behavior then reinforces the label as every departure from the norm is fitted into a stereotype.
Conversely, the individual who perceives himself as homosexual may believe that he must act out all the fea­tures of the stereotype connected with the label, no matter how repellent or alien they may have been to him in the past. Such behavior is most common among working-class homosexuals who live in a milieu where sex roles are rigidly pre­scribed, so that the individual who has become accustomed to behaving sexually "like a woman" must, so he feels, act in other ways like a caricature of the female. This provokes the question asked by the teenager who is just "coming out": "Do I have to be like that ?" with the implication that he perceives the stereotype as alien, even if he accepts the sexual orientation as consonant with the rest of his inner self. The internalization of the identity im­plied by the label is sometimes designated as "secondary deviance," in contrast with the "primary deviance" which is the overt activity that initially motivated the label.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. John 1. Kitsuse, "Societal Reaction to Deviant Behavior: Problems of Theory and Method," Social Problems, 9 (1963), 247-56; Stephen O. Murray, Social Theory, Homosexual Realities, New York: Gay Academic Union, 1984.
Warren Johansson

Lambda
In the early 1970s, in the wake of the Stonewall Rebellion, New York City's Gay Activists Alliance selected the Greek letter lambda, which member Tom Doerr suggested from its scientific use to desig­nate "kinetic potential," as its emblem. (Curiously, in some ancient Greek graffiti the capital lambda appears with the mean­ing "fellate," representing the first letter of either lambazein or laikazein.) Because of its militant associations, the lambda symbol has spread throughout the world. It sometimes appears in the form of an amulet hung round the neck as a subtle sign of recognition which can "pass" among unknowing heterosexuals as a mere orna­ment. Such emblems may reflect a ten­dency amonghomosexuals toward "tribalization" as a distinct segment of society, one conceived as a quasi-ethnic group.

Language and Linguistics
The history of the study of lan­guage, which in the Western tradition goes back to the ancient Greeks, has two main phases: the prescriptive era, when most linguists were in alliance with schoolmas­ters in seeking norms of correctness, and the descriptive era, which began with the discoveries of the neo-grammarian school in the early nineteenth century in Ger­many. Taken as a whole, neither tradition has had much to say about the vocabulary and semantics of sex and their develop­ment. Three branches of linguistics have however made some contribution. Ety­mology, the science of the origin of words, can cast light on changing ideas about sexuality. Unfortunately one must beware of many false and misleading etymologies, such as the absurd claim that the word faggot in the meaning "homosexual" de­rives from the burning of sodomites at the stake. Then the study of slang, where sex vies with intoxication for the title of the most productive realm, has also produced considerable material. Finally, the recent development of sociolinguistics offers some material on the pragmatics of gay male and lesbian social encounters.
Words and Concepts over the Centuries. Study of the origins of words pertaining to sexuality show that many - probably most - expressions in current use have pedigrees stretching back over centu­ries and even millennia. Such backgrounds are characteristic not only of "scientific" words, such as deviation and orientation, but also of such slang or street words as chicken or rocks. Folklorists have shown that notions in circulation, say, in the Ozarks in the first half of this century have ultimate origins in opinions expressed by Greek thinkers seventy or more genera­tions before. For this reason, and also because of scholarly habit, our language preserves a number of terms going back to the ancient Greeks, the oldest significant source. Interestingly, however, the Greeks had no single term encompassing same-sex conduct as a whole, only more special­ized terms for what we would regard as aspects of homosexuality. The absence of the idea derived from the fact that the Greeks concentrated on one particular form of male same-sex behavior, pederasty; also, their semantic grid classified sexual activ­ity from standpoints that did not admit a high level of generalization. Carefully em­ploy ed, then, the study of words can reveal not only ideas that were current but also ideas that were absent.
In addition to lack of develop­ment of words and concepts, there is also active deletion as a result of taboo. From earliest recorded history we have evidence that certain names were not to be uttered because of the dangers that surrounded them. With regard to homosexuality this factor has entered in through the Tudeo-Christian proscription of sodomy. Thus we encounter such expressions as "the nameless sin," "the Cities of the Plain" (for Sodom and Gomorrah), "the crime against nature," "gross indecency," and so forth. There is also a common garden vari­ety of deletion, as when a suburbanite will ask another: "Is he that way?" or "Is she one of themV Such evasive verbal ploys belong to the realm of euphemism, which in addition to neutral terms can resort to foreign words because their impact is less harsh than that of the native ones learned in childhood.
Against this background the open use of hostile street language gains, by contrast, a particular aggressive edge. Thus for one teenager to call another queer or faggot may be particularly damaging to the self image of the one so styled. This phe­nomenon has been studied by social scien­tists under the name of labeling - though the role such incidents are likely to play in the emerging self-concept of the younggay or lesbian person remains problematic.
Not to be neglected are the con­tributions of generations of homosexuals themselves. While the distinction of the wry gay wit known as camp has been generally recognized, the writings of homosexual theorists - particularly in Germany - have played a major role in forming the learned vocabulary. Down to 1897 the experts who wrote on homosexu­ality felt obliged to use such expressions as "this disgrace to human nature" or "these dark crimes," but after the movement had devised its own terminology a neutral phraseology gradually became standard. More difficult to investigate are nondenotative levels - particular arrangements of ordinary words and such paraverbal as­pects as lilt and pitch, not to mention the gestures that accompany particular ex­pressions. In the past these gestures and intonations were often the obligatory passport to acceptance in some circles and situations; their absence was thought to betray the undercover agent or would-be robber or blackmailer. What is ultimately needed is a semiotics of gay and lesbian communication, which would embrace both verbal and nonverbal elements.
Sources of Words. At one time a strict separation was made between "sci­entific" terms, on the one hand, and slang or taboo expressions, on the other. As a rule, the latter have flourished among the folk as emotion-laden epithets, while the former were ostensibly coined to foster a more dispassionate and "objective" tone of discussion. Today these boundaries are eroding, and one can use gay or dyke in respectable discourse, while some learned terms, such as androgyny and sadomaso­chism, are fairly widely understood in the vernacular. Also, terms such as "devia­tion, " originally introduced because of their strict neutrality, filtered down into the technical language of the law, so that some jurisdictions adopted statutes penalizing "deviant sexual conduct." Yet a problem persists with terms coming from the slang vocabulary: they are sometimes con­fusingly polysemous, as hustler (male prostitute or pool-hall pro?) and straight (heterosexual or drug free?).
The sources of our words may be classified as follows: (1) classical (from Greece and Rome: fellatio, ganymede, hierodule, tribade); (2) theological (bug­gery, the unnatural, the unnamable vice); (3) medical (constitutional homosexual­ity, inversion, masochism); (4) hterary eu­phemism (posterior, maleness, titillation); ¡5) slang (butch, comholing, nellie). A possible sixth category is the law, yet study of legal usage shows that its terms, in this realm at least, have generally been borrowed-above all from theology (sodomy, crime against nature). Some coinages come from a gray area or interface between these main spheres, notably homosexual, which was invented by Karoly Maria Kertbeny, a closeted homophile apologist, and then taken up by medical and scientific writers, some of them too, of course, homosexual.
On occasion the ultimate field of origin is surprisingly remote, e.g., bisexuality (from botany) and orientation (from church archi­tecture).
Some scholars have been inter­ested in an ambitious project to correlate the strata of word use with successive stages of conceptualization. This endeavor is usually regarded as part of the sociology of knowledge. In the case of words pertain­ing to sexuality, particular care is needed so as not to make this parallel too me­chanical. Thus the meaning of a single word sodomy has varied considerably over the centuries; a single bottle has held vari­ous contents, so to speak. Conversely, when the term (sexual) inversion was in­troduced in 1878, it was made to contain various older ingredients. The invention of new words does not necessarily signal the appearance of new meanings.
Sociohnguistics. Assisted by new techniques, including electronic monitor­ing and analysis, the emerging subdiscipline of sociohnguistics has begun to study oral language usage in actual encounter situations. For example, in gay cruising the classic opening gambits are the pro forma questions, "Do you have the time?" or "Do you have a match?" The sociolinguist studies the context of such exchanges and their characteristic patterns. Another situation is the use of coded language to reveal one's homosexuality to another person thought to be gay. This procedure may be fairly subtle, as in the use of ordi­nary words in an ambiguous context or reference to "in" places and events. Then there is a more flagrant manifestation, formerly termed "dropping pins," in which the speaker abandons all caution and "camps up a storm."
A subject of continuing interest is the difference between men's and women's use of language, as seen, for example, in intonation. Study has found that women are more likely to end a sen­tence with a rising inflection, as if it were a question. More generally, the pitch of women's speech in our culture has a broader range than the more monotonic texture of the macho male - which is "straight" with regard to pitch. Like women's speech, that of gay men has more range or animation. But there is also an aggressive, "bitchy" form of gay male intonation that has no precise equivalent among women. This intonation may sometimes be heard when a gay man tells a joke; the same joke may take on a different coloration owing to a different tonic rendition on the part of the speaker. Older gay men will remember that "tunes" which were once common have disappeared to be replaced by others. In these realms clearly much more study is needed.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary, London: Duckworth, 1982; Claude Courouve, Vocabulaire de l'homosexuahté mascuhne, Paris: Payot, 1985; Wayne R. Dynes, Homolexis: A Historical and Cultural Lexicon of Homosexuahty, New York: Gay Academic Union, 1985; Joseph Hayes, "Language and Language Behavior in Lesbian Women and Gay Men: A Selected Bibliography," fournal of Homosexuahty, 4 (1978-79), 201-12; 299-009.
Wayne R. Dynes

Latent Homosexuality
Psychiatric writings of the 1940s and 1950s commonly distinguished be­tween overt and latent homosexuality. The latter in turn has two forms: in the first, conscious homosexual desires are present but are controlled by the subject; and in the second, homosexual drives are unconscious. The popularity of the notion stems from two themes of Sigmund Freud. In human psychosexual development, Freud held, the latency period begins at the time of the decline of infantile sexual­ity in the fifth or sixth year and lasts until the onset of puberty. During this phase sexual development essentially marks time, and does not undergo any fundamen­tal reorganization, albeit the capacity for repression becomes marked. Although Freud used the term in a nonpathological sense, most analysts, having had medical training, would recall the older definition of "latent period" among physicians: the period of the incubation of a disease. The other Freudian theme was the idea of universal bisexuality. In this perspective all human beings have a capacity to expe­rience same-sex attraction, but for most of them this option is not exercised during adulthood.
A process of abstraction from these two sources yields two distinct models of latent homosexuality: as dor­mant, and as potential. In the first model (dormant), latent homosexuals are thought of as a discrete body of individuáis whose same-sex dimension is pre-overt. They are set off from the rest of the population in that they are "on track" to becoming prac­ticing homosexuals - though this goal may not be achieved in every instance. In the second model (potential), a much larger segment of the population is involved - possibly everyone, if the hypothesis of universal bisexuality is accepted. The first model is selective, and assuming adequate methods of diagnosis - constituting a kind of "early warning system" - it would per­mit the psychiatrist to predict the likeli­hood of an individual's becoming an overt homosexual. The second model has no diagnostic or predictive value, being merely "philosophical." The difference seems clear, yet rarely were the two models dis­tinguished in psychiatric literature and practice. Moreover, as has been indicated, hovering in the background was the as­sumption that latent conditions are patho­logical. Hence repetition of the phrase helped to reinforce the prejudice that homosexuahty was a disease. Finally, since latent homosexuahty could be present in the unconscious, some individuals began to worry that, though they felt no identifi­able symptoms, somehow their homosexu­ahty was simply waiting to burst into full flower. Thus the spread of the notion helped to foster homosexual panic, and numbers of individuals - sometimes labeled "pseudohomosexuals" - sought clinical help for a problem which was not theirs. To be sure, their panic was real, and this distress the clinician sought to treat.
Because of these complications, the idea of latent homosexuality has come to he generally regarded as heuristically unsound, and the expression has begun to disappear from both psychiatric and lay discourse.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Leon Salzman, "'Latent' Homosexuality," in). Marmor, ed., Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality, New York: Basic Books, 1965, pp. 2347.
Wayne R. Dynes

Latin America
The conquests of the Spanish and the Portuguese in the New World laid the basis for colonial and post-colonial socie­ties that show a number of common fea­tures. It is customary to associate with them the French-speakingrepublic of Haiti, but this country is so distinct that it will not be considered here.
TheBasic UnderlyingSexualldeology. Today the former Iberian colonies in the New World provide the prototype of the gender-defined organization of homo­sexuality. Across the whole culture area, ideal norms distinguish masculine insertors [activos) not considered homosexu­ales from feminine insertees {pasivos) who are. The typological system is very simple, but in messy reality behavior and identity are more complex. Over time (in a "sexual career") or with different partners, a man's behavioral repertoire may diverge from the clearcut dichotomy. The imaginary undifferentiated phallic supremacy of the hombre supposedly common to Iberian and former Iberian colonies in the New World is overly neat. Certainly there are individuals who impersonate these ideal types (essences), but the sexually omnivo­rous hombre who has no preferences in "object choice" - the man who "fucks anything that moves" - is more a fantasy of the maricón, the stereotypical homo­sexual who aspires to his attentions, than a plausible empirical observation. Projec­tion of this fantasy is undoubtedly flatter­ing to the other who may be insecure about his masculinity and not likely to contra­dict flattering maricón claims about how masculine he is.
The pretence is carefully main­tained by the activo's endless stream of sexual remarks which proclaim an insa­tiable sexual appetite but may not signify any actual sexual expectations or even interest in the targets of the remarks. Latin American men must show that they are interested in phallic activity - especially if they do not have regular sexual opportu­nities - by talking about what they would like to do to any imaginably penetrable object. Particularly in cities, there are not many ways to demonstrate "traditional" masculinity: only a few have physically demanding jobs. *
The dearth of women who are available for actual sex and the general lack of privacy for sex with willing part­ners - along with cultural pressure on men to have sex regularly and on women to maintain the honor of their fathers, broth­ers, or husbands by resisting sexual in­volvement with anyone except a husband - lead to flamboyant verbal sexual postur­ing. Foreign observers may mistakenly interpret such talk as indicating that Latino men are hypersexual. It is easy to play the role of a lobo listo (literally, "ready wolf") when few demands are likely to be made: the Latino male is rarely if ever going to be pressed to demonstrate that he is ready.
Some observers have claimed that a fear of enjoying being anally penetrated is a salient concern for Latino males. The danger (not of being penetrated, but of coming to desire it) has been reported to be part of Islamic sexual ideology and may have a circum-Mediterranean diffusion carried to the New World by Iberian con­querors. Still, the feared anal penetration does not turn everyone who has experi­enced it into a maricón, and masculine deportment and self-conception are not necessarily compromised or jettisoned even by insertee homosexual activity, especially with aliens.
Within the culture, among na­tives, sexual receptivity does not necessar­ily lead to enacting a maricón role or build­ing a gay identity. Even when obtainable, the luxury of privacy is not as safe with peers as with foreigners. Thus, to say that it does not matter what a Latino male does as long as no one finds out does not say much, because of the necessary caveat "hardly ever does no one find out." Some things remain hidden [escondido], but guarantees of eternal silence are dubious. Homosexuality can be compartmental­ized - in space or time. According to Goode (1960), compartmentalization of roles is a common response to role strain, not just to managing masculine self-presentation while engaged in homosexual behavior in Latin America. In Latin America, as in Anglo North America, homosexual in­volvement of some persons is an open secret, homosexual involvement of others is genuinely escondido. Despite the reti­cence about discussing homosexuality in regards to one's self or peers or family, there is essentializing pressure to tie up sex and gender, even though the nuances of technical distinctions of sex, sexuality, gender (and possible variations of each) can be illustrated. There are certainly masculine-appearing males who are insertees, and effeminate-appearing males who are exclusively insertors, but the clear, simple masculine/feminine division is paramount in Latino views of gender and sex. Behavioral variance is irrelevant to this organizing principle. The actual flux and uncertainty of sexual expression is ignored "by the culture," or, rather, by Latino males who do not want to know, talk about, or think that masculine ap­pearances do not necessarily validate un­tainted masculine essence. Behavioral variance corrodes certainty in the ideal norms, but these ideal norms are carried in many media, including primary socializa­tion. Credence in and approval of the machismo complex channel behavior to conformity. How and what sexual norms and behaviors mean for natives is only beginning to be explored. Major obstacles exist in Latin America to community-formation and public self-identification as both masculine and homosexual. These will be surveyed in the remainder of this article.
Obstacles to an Autonomous Gay Culture. The Latin American family re­tains economic functions. The family as a production unit is particularly significant in Mesoamerica - less so in the "southern cone" nations of Argentina and Chile. Even urban families that are not production units provide social security in countries far from being welfare states. In societies experienced by most as capricious and heartless, the family provides more than merely psychological shelter. If one is struck down by illness or injury and has no family to support him or her, s/he will be reduced to begging in the streets. Examples of this horrific danger are readily visible.
Latin Americans cannot, and had better not, take for granted minimum security being supplied against disability, as citizens of welfare states can. The insur­ance against disability offered by the fam­ily is an economic system, not any per­verse, pathological passivity deriving from an obsession with fertility on the part of individuals, the culture, or the Roman Catholic Church. "Familial orientation" as well as high Mesoamerican fertility can better be explained by examining the family as an economic unit than by looking to individual-level values.
Because revelation of homosexu­ality is a basis for expulsion from the home and the economic as well as psychological security provided by the family, homosexually active Latin Americans cultivate family relations to a greater extent than do those who can take it for granted. In some cases, they exercise the right of males who have reached sexual maturity to come and go from home at will less than do their brothers. Moreover, behavior must be particularly circumspect in the presence of one's siblings, and particularly on the subject of sex. Reticence is essential if many people live in a small space juntos рею no revueltos (together, but not scrambled).
Though homosexually active Mesoamericans who do not build their own families Uve at home longer than those who start families of their own, and also show somewhat greater concern with maintaining the support of relatives, these relations often involve no intimacy. The popular psychoanalytic obsession with mothers, projected onto the etiology of homosexuality, is useless in explaining homosexuality in Mesoamerica, because the veneration of martyr (Madonna/saintly) mothers is ubiquitous, while homosexual­ity is not. Regardless of sexual orientation, persons continue to Uve at home, not just "mother-fixated" homosexual men. Tak­ing prospective sexual partners to where one lives is rarely possible in Mesoamer­ica. For the affluent, there are visits to resorts, repair to hotels in their own city, automobiles, and trysting apartments {put­erías). For those who are not affluent, there is the dark. There are also public baths, varying in how predominantly they are patronized by those in search of homosex­ual encounters. As elsewhere in the world, secure privacy for lovemaking is a luxury. The pattern of residence pushes pre- and extramarital intercourse (heterosexual as well as homosexual) into the streets. This fact does not prevent quick sexual encoun­ters (fichas), but is a major obstacle to ongoing relationships. Those who wish "to walk in the realm of love" (amblar en el plan del amor) do not have the easy path - moving in together - open to norteamericanos. Even families which accept a relationship within the family circle (treating the amante as another son) do not want outsiders to know that they have produced and are harboring un raro (a queer one). In gratitude for this (infre­quently granted) minimum of acceptance, few couples are willing to demand more, such as the chance to be alone together sometimes. Some couples do manage to carry on long-term relationships without any place in which they can be together in private, but this is quite a difficult achieve­ment.
Collective Consciousness. Gay consciousness is no more automatic a product of homosexual behavior than class consciousness is of "objective class posi­tion" or ethnic consciousness of geneal­ogy. In a population of persons with such a characteristic, some will not consider themselves defined in any way by it, and others wlil deny the characteristic alto­gether. The existence and importance of a characteristic must be realized if there is to be a consciousness of kind: characteris­tics are only potential bases.
In Anglo-Am erica such a realization was facilitated by the congregation into "gay ghettoes" after World War H. Such residential concentration of homosexually-inclined men is precluded where the unmarried indefinitely continue to live at home. The specific pattern of historical development of gay communities in An­glo-America need not be assumed to con­stitute the only possible route to the rejec­tion of pariah status. On the other hand, provision of sex will not in itself produce a sense of peoplehood. Cruising areas and social networks of homosexually-inclined men exist and have existed with varying degrees of visibility in cities everywhere, while a sense of belonging to a community of those whose identity is based on shared sexual preferences has not. Something more than sexual acts in "the city of night" is needed to provide a conception of a shared fate.
A Mesoamerican cannot learn about the common experiences of those with homosexual desires from print mel dia, any more than he can discuss them with those with whom he lives. There is de facto censorship of anything remotely interpretable as legitimating homosexual­ity. Police and judges exercise wide discre­tion in interpreting what is immoral and declaring publications as apologias de un vicio (apologies for vice). Military dicta­torships in particular find publications advocating unconventional behavior threatening - more threatening than homosexual behavior which may be toler­ated as long as gender conventions are maintained.
Nonetheless, association with like others is also limited. For fear of hav­ing their reputation "burned" [quemada] and their security thereby endangered, many persons involved in homosexual behavior avoid being seen with or being ac­knowledged by males who might be judged effeminate, and also avoid places where homosexuals are known to congregate. The same pattern existed among homo­sexual Anglo-Americans, although there it was fear of losing jobs more than Mesoamericans' fear of the family's learn­ing of stigmatizing association. The lack of positive literature and the fear of guilt by association were obstacles overcome by gay liberation movements in Anglo-America, so there is evidence that such obstacles are surmountable. Indeed, the demonstration that change is possible is an advantage gay movements in their early development today have. In post-war North America, without any known historical precedent, the possibility of change was difficult to conceive. On the other hand, in a welfare state in which there was no economic necessity to stay with one's family, a critical mass developed in a vis­ible territory. The growth and metamor­phosis of recreational facilities within an area of increasing residential concentra­tion of homosexuals facilitated the sense of shared experience that led gay North Americans to reject negative attitudes toward homosexuality and to demand full acceptance. Whether there are functional alternatives to residential concentration is at this point open to question. Although a sense of community is easier to instill if there is a visible territory, distinct gay facilities and services might develop with­out a residential concentration. Contin­ued residence with families scattered throughout cities is a considerable obstacle to the formation of gay consciousness, culture and community as these have developed in Anglo North America. Only time will tell if there are other routes to similar - or to other - developments.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Joseph M. Carrier, "Cultural Factors Affecting Urban Mexican Male Homosexual Behavior," Archives of Sexual Behavior, 5 (1976), 103-24; idem, "Family Attitudes and Mexican Male Homosexuality," Urban Life, 5 (1976), 359-75; William J. Goode, "Role Strain," American Sociological Review, 25 (1960), 483-96; Stephen O. Murray, Male Homosexuality in Central and South America, New York: Gay Academic Union, 1987 (Gai Saber Monograph 5).
Stephen O. Murray

Lautreamont, Comte de (pseudonym of Isidore Ducasse; 1846-1870)
French writer, author of Les chants de Maldoror (1868), a book-length poem in prose. It is a fantasy and medita­tion in which the title character addresses thereader, sometimes reporting things said to him or switching to the third person. Maldoror's narration is a unique revel in the horrible and macabre, as he delights in sadism and gloats over human wicked­ness, weakness, and cruelty. The disgust­ing, repulsive, and painful are stressed. The work contains murder, torture of children and animals, and bestiality (inter­course with a female shark, his "first love"). God, whom Maldoror sees as an inferior, sits on a throne of excrement and gold and eats men. The poem is seemingly a study in hatred and self-loathing, but it is actu­ally a work of self-affirmation and even in­nocence, and Maldoror is a powerful ex­ample of a Romantic hero. Though he despises himself and is disgusted by the universe, Maldoror at least recognizes and admits what he and it are, and this is his claim to moral stature. It is a statement that one is human and that one accepts that. He faces death and annihilation as a pagan, without sorrow or fear.
The homosexual theme of the book is central. Male homosexuality is presented positively, and women are re­jected. Homosexuals are "crystallizations of a superior moral beauty," whose "pros­titution to any chance comer exercises the logic of the deepest thinkers." What ten­derness and compassion is found in the work is directed toward beautiful, angelic boys, although Maldoror tortures and kills them. Compared with the violence, sod­omy is made to seem positively benign. Maldoror wishes the universe were an "immense celestial anus, " through which, with his penis, he would "discover the subterranean spot where truth lies slum­bering."
The relationship between the narrator Maldoror and the author Lau­tréamont is of course ambiguous. The reader cannot help but speculate about the author's personality, but little biographi­cal information is available, which adds to the work's allure. Born in Uruguay of French parents, Ducasse attended school in France, and died in obscurity at the age of 24. His only other work is a less interesting Poesies ¡1870). None of the few biographical details laboriously unearthed long after his death explains the work in the slightest. The reader is left with specu­lations. Ducasse certainly shows more strongly the influence of Baudelaire and Sade than does any other writer. Like Sade, he is rarely studied in universities.
Lautréamont had a great influ­ence on the decadent and Surrealist writ­ers of the late nineneenth and early twen­tieth century. In the case of Surrealism, this influence is somewhat ironic inas­much as André Breton, the leader of the movement, was openly homophobic.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Lautréamont, Maldoror (Les Chants de Maldoror), translated by Guy Wemham, New York: New Directions, 1943; Wallace Fowlie, Lautréamont, New York: Twayne, 1973; Guillermo de Torre, Historia de las literaturas de vanguardia, Madrid: Guadarrama, 1971, II, 65-72.
Daniel Eisenberg

Law (Major Traditions in the West)
Those who reject homosexual behavior as abhorrent often suppose that legal prohibitions against it are univer­sal - the product of some instinctive human rejection of the "unnatural" or "abominable." Examination of the his­torical and cross-cultural evidence dis­closes no such universal prohibition. Even the Mediterranean-Northwest European traditions discussed here have no consis­tent uniformity of condemnation. Yet some patterns emerge: the criminal statutes of late medieval Europe and their successors stem from a single source - the Biblical prohibitions of the Mosaic Law.
The Ancient Near East. The law codes of the ancient Near East took notice of homosexuality only when incest or the use of force was involved, or when a male individual was falsely accused of taking the passive role in homosexual relations (slander). This is all that the Hittite, Middle Assyrian, and early Israelite legal texts have to say on the subject. However, a quite old statute forbade the male Israelite to be a kádésh, a hierodule in the service of the Ishtar-Tammuz cult, and for that rea­son the kedeshTm mentioned in the books of Kings of the Old Testament are foreign­ers who "were in the land" until expelled by the reforming monarchs who favored the religion of Jahweh.
The laws of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 are the first in the ancient world to formulate, albeit awkwardly, a global prohibition of homosexual acts between males, though not between females. These laws were not part of the original Holiness Code, but belong to a novella of the Persian period, in any case no later than 458 b.c. It is likely that they were influenced by a similar prohibition of male homosexual­ity in the Zoroastrian religion of the Per­sian Empire, under whose domination the Jewish community lived for more than two centuries. But by the time the con­quests of Alexander the Great initiated the Hellenistic period of Jewish history, the prohibition had become a distinctive fea­ture of Judaic sexual morality, and from this source it passed into the other Abrahamic religons, Christianity and Islam, though with different consequences in each. Significantly, none of the sacred texts of these three religions - the Old Testa­ment, the New Testament, and the Ko­ran - makes any mention of lesbianism, which was invisible to their ethical con­sciousness.
Classical Antiquity. The Athe­nian law punished only the male citizen who prostituted himself to another male, as prostitution was a calling only of slaves and aliens - not of full-fledged citizens. This law formed the background of Aeschines' accusations against Timarchus, which have been misread as a global con­demnation of pederasty in Athenian soci­ety. What ancient Mediterranean culture did maintain was a sharp dichotomy be­tween the active and passive roles in homosexual (and even heterosexual) rela­tions; for an adult male to take the passive role in sexual union with another man degraded and dishonored him in the eyes of society. Contrariwise, the woman who proved too aggressive in heterosexual rela­tions was equally stigmatized in that cul­ture. This mentality created the back­ground for Paul's strictures in Romans 1: 25-27: the women who "changed the order of nature" were the "daughters of men" who are accused of seducing the "sons of the gods" in Genesis 6: 1-4. The men who "burned in their lust toward one another" are the Sodomites of Genesis 19 who are reproached for passive homosexuality. As an early commentator remarked, "what their worst enemies would have liked to do to them, they did to themselves."
Under the Roman republic, the Lex Scatinia or Scantinia from the third century b.c. seems to have directed against the use of force or authority to compel a free man to submit to what was in Roman eyes a degrading act; its full import and application remain obscure. Jewish apolo­gists boasted that in the Mediterranean world at the beginning of the Roman empire, their own people alone remained untainted by the vice of pederasty which all other nations practiced. In fact, the defeat of the Jews in the war against Rome which ended with the destruction of the Second Temple (a.d. 66-70) was felt by them to be a particular humiliation be­cause the Romans engaged in pederasty.
It was with the dynasty of Constantine the Great (305-337) that the first statutes penalizing male homosexuality enter the Roman law codes. Victorious Christianity had ratified the code of sexual morality embodied in Leviticus 18 and made it part of its own constitution. Even so, the first legal texts are couched in the language of Roman virtue and of condemna­tion of men who "have changed their sex" rather than that of the Latin renderings of the Old Testament. It is with the Byzan­tine Emperor Justinian (527-565) that al­lusions to the destruction of Sodom enter the logic of Novellae 77 and 141, which prohibit the crime that had caused "whole cities to be destroyed together with their inhabitants." Since the Corpus Juris Civilis became the foundation of legal think­ing in Western Europe, these texts were the motivation for the criminalization of sodomy through later centuries.
The Middle Ages. With the col­lapse of the Roman Empire, its codes were replaced by barbarian legal traditions that know little of homosexual behavior as a crime. It was in Canon Law, therefore, that thereligious condemnation of homos exual expression was perpetuated and made a part of popular morality, although centu­ries of indoctrination were needed to instill the belief in the mass mind that sodomy was a "crime against nature" and the sodomite a criminal on a par with heretics and witches.
The full force of the church's teaching arrived only in the thirteenth century, when the scholastic theologians Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas taught that sodomy was a crime against the order of nature because it denied the procreative function of sexuality, and held it second only to murder in gravity. The close of that century saw not merely legal enactments prescribing the death penalty, but also records of capital punishment. Although executions were never numer­ous, they served to impress upon the popu­lar mind the horror of "unnatural" sexual conduct. The defamation of sodomy also offered a convenient alibi to the church whenever any misfortune struck: since there was always a reservoir of unpun­ished sexual immorality within the com­munity, divine wrath at these unexpiated sins became the explanation, and the "sodomite" the scapegoat upon whose head all the ills of society could be blamed. From the end of the thirteenth century until the close of the eighteenth the homosexual was everywhere in Western Europe a criminal and an outcast who had to hide his sexual activity and identity from a vindictive Christian society.
Modernity and the Foundations of Reform. With the Enlightenment the legal thinkers of Western Europe began the secularization of the criminal law. Beccaria, Voltaire, and their followers, arguing that the crime of sodomy belonged to canon and not to civil law, convinced the educated public that offenses against religion and morality were matters for confession and expiation rather than con­cerns of the state. It was against the back­ground of these beliefs that the penal code adopted by the Constituent Assembly of Revolutionary France in 1791 for the first time in modem history omitted the crime of sodomy from the list of punishable of­fenses, and the Code Napoleon of 1810 retained this innovation. Following the French example, a large number of coun­tries, mainly Roman Catholic ones, re­formed their own penal codes in the course of the nineteenth century. In other legal systems, however, the sole change was to replace the death penalty with Ufe impris­onment or some other punishment that fell just short of it.
Most significant, however, was the change in the motivation of the laws. While medieval legislators had only to refer to the Bible as the inspired word of God, modem lawmakers have had to ra­tionalize their condemnation with the pseudo-utilitarian claim that homosexual acts "undermine the moral fibre of the nation" or would reduce the birth rate so drastically as to raise the spectre of race suicide, or with some quasi-democratic allusion to the "moral feelings of the people" that are purportedly offended by homosexual behavior. What reveals the alleged motives as rationalizations is the simple fact that wholly different arguments are cited in official or semi-official com­mentaries on the same law. This has been true particularly in the authoritarian states of the twentieth century that restored the earlier laws (the Soviet Union) or even made the existing ones more punitive (Nazi Germany). By contrast the American court decisions that allude to the book of Lev­iticus as the starting point of the legal tradition have an almost naive and old-fashioned ring. The cumulative effect of the sundry changes in the law down to the 1950s and later resulted in a situation where - in some jurisdictions - consensual sodomy carried more severe penalties than armed robbery, theft of funds from a chari­table institution, or beating or neglecting a small child.
Phases of Reform. The modern sexual reform movement began at the end of the nineteenth century. Its efforts were directed at the legal plight of homosexuals because the latter still bore the brunt of legal and social intolerance that had sur­vived the middle ages. The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, founded in Berlin in 1897, took as its primary goal the repeal of Paragraph 175 of the Penal Code of the German Reich, a stance ratified by the World League for Sexual Reform on a Scientific Basis in the 1920s. However,
even in such democratic countries as England and the United States, a still uninformed and puritanical public opin­ion frustrated the attempt to create similar movements until the 1950s.
The new era commenced after the Second World War with the Kinsey Reports of 1948 and 1953, and the Report of the Wolfenden Committee in 1957. The extent of the tabooed sexual activity be­came known to the public as never before, and a committee appointed by parliament after weighing the evidence concluded that private, consenting homosexual behavior was "not the law's business," while soci­ologists argued that "victimless crimes" harmed no one and their prosecution was detrimental rather than beneficial to soci­ety. Further, the notion of privacy in sex­ual matters as a right of the individual found its way into legal discourse, so that the European Court of Human Rights in 1981, in response to an appeal brought by a citizen of Northern Ireland, held that laws penalizing private consensual homo­sexual behavior violated the right of pri­vacy guaranteed by the European Conven­tion on Human Rights (1950).
Informed opinion has veered almost totally to the side of decriminaliza­tion of homosexual activity, and in a few jurisdictions the first steps have been taken toward guaranteeinghomosexuals the civil rights enjoyed by the rest of the population but denied them because of the social intolerance that still thrives in circles that regard the Old Testament as the inspired word of God. In the 1980s the issue of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) unhappily raised the specter of a "threat to public health," gleefully bran­dished by the enemies of law reform to reinforce their never-ending citations from Leviticus and Romans when arguing be­fore the courts and legislatures. But the secular trend is toward the abolition of the penal statutes that echo the canon law of the medieval church, as even more and more heterosexuals depart from the Chris­tian ideal of "lifelong, indissoluble, mo­nogamous heterosexual marriage." Con­sequently, the legislators and appellate courts of the future will have the task of defining intimate relationships between members of the same sex (and members of opposite sexes) so as to do justice to the realities of social life and the interests of the community.
See also Common Law; Criminal Law Amendment Act; Law, Feudal and Royal; Law, Germanic; Law, Municipal.
Warren Johansson

Law, British
See Common Law.

Law, Canon
See Canon Law.

Law, Common
See Common Law.

Law, Feudal and Royal
Between 1050 and 1300 scholars of ecclesiastical or canon law and scholas­tics and other theologians had defined sodomy as tantamount to murder, both sins contrary to reason, nature, and the will of God. The rebirth of the study of Roman law occurred after 1100 with the discovery of Justinian's Digest or Pandects (compiled during the early phase of the Byzantine Empire). This legal revival gave renewed currency to the provision con­demning sodomy as an infamous crime deserving of the death penalty. Doctors of civil law from the University of Bologna - which also awarded degrees in canon law, often to the same candidate, so that he became Doctor utriusqueiuris, "Doctor of both laws" - cited the Corpus Iuris Ci­vilis, which contained in addition to the Digest, the Code, Institutes and Novellae, to demand capital punishment in secular law and severer penalties in canon law. In his Commentary on the Codex, ca. 1230, Accursius briefly noted the distinction the Romans made between stuprum (forcible rape of a female or a boy) and consensual sodomy, for which there had been no penalty before 342. Accursius correctly commented that stupmm referred to rape of boy s as well as females. Peter the Chanter (d. 1197) equated homosexual acts with murder and the Third Lateran Council in 1179 ordered guilty clerics defrocked or confined to monasteries and laymen ex­communicated. Moslems were accused of raping men and boys and even sodomizing a bishop to death. The Germanic law codes of the early Middle Ages had made no reference to homosexual offenses. Char­lemagne, shocked by monkish sodomy, threatened penalties against the offenders, but the only part of a capitulary of Char­lemagne (in 779) condemning homosexual acts that survives is a forgery. In 966 in Rome the Emperor Otto I promulgated an edict that prescribed strangulation and burning for sodomy between males, as it were epitomizingTheodosius' edict of390.
Crusaders were accused of im­porting effeminate Moslem customs to Europe. This charge underlay the suspi­cion of the Templars. Thirty years after the First Crusade, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem drafted the first secular laws during the high Middle Ages prescribing burning for sodomites. "When Saracens see boys, they lust for them and like mad dogs race to buy the (Frankish) boys," declared William of Ada.
Before the end of the twelfth century, other civil authorities began to assume jurisdiction over sodomy. Hith­erto the clergy had meted out penances for it and continued to do so, though it soon became "reserved" so that only bishops could absolve it, in part because it had become associated with heresy. In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council called for secular help against heretics, with whom sodomites were classified. When the episcopate failed, the Papal inquisitors increasingly took charge after 1220. The Inquisition associated the Cathari of Southern France, also called "Bougres" because their sect was identified with the Bogomils of Bulgaria, with sodomy. In­quisitors supported by the crown tortured and burned the sodomites in Toulouse and throughout the South along with the Albigensians. The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II promulgated the Constitu­tions of Melfi in 1231, which conspicu­ously omitted sodomy, of which he him­self was accused. Likewise silent were the German Sachsenspiegel and Schwabenspiegel compiled in Frederick's reign. However, Alfonso X of Castile, St. Louis of France, and Edward I of England all used Roman law to create a national law to override local customs and centralize their realms, and claimed jurisdiction over capital crimes such as sodomy and the property of those convicted thereof. The Guelph Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily from 1266 to 1285, regularly paid papal inquisitors from his royal coffers.
Individual Countries. AsBoswell argues, "between 1250 and 1300 in most Catholic countries laws which had previ­ously ignored homosexual acts prescribed the death penalty for them." But these laws were inspired by the church as when Gregory IX sent the Dominicans to extir­pate sodomy in Germany "so ridden with unnatural vice . . . that some parts, espe­cially Austria, are thought of as infected with the foulness of leprosy." About 1250 the English legal author Fleta prescribed burning for sodomites, to whom the ear­lier collections of Glanville and Britton or those known as the "Laws of Henry I" had made no reference.
Alfonso X of Castille (ca. 1226-1284) prescribed castration and then ston­ing, and his Siete Partidas considered sodomy "infamous" so that it dishonored the offender's clan and deprived them of their inheritance. In 1497 Ferdinand and Isabella, los reyes católicos, ordered con­fiscation of goods and burning alive, no matter what class the offender, treating such cases as mixri fori, belonging to both secular and ecclesiastical courts. The Spanish Inquisition gained jurisdiction in Aragón, but not in Castile or Sicily.
Pope Nicholas II had empowered the papal Inquisition to investigate sod­omy in 1457. In 1506 at Seville inquisitors arrested a great number of suspects, though many more fled, and burnt 12. When in Valencia in 1519 a Friar preached that the pest infecting the city was caused by sodomites, the mob found four culprits who confessed and were burnt by the justiciary, and a fifth who given a lesser sentence was seized by the populace, garroted, and burnt.
Philip II in 1569 ordered rigid enforcement by royal officers of the death penalty in Sicily, the informer receiving a bounty from the estate of the sodomite, but since there were not many convic­tions, jurisdiction reverted to the Inquisi­tion in 1597.
At the urging of Joao III (1502-1557), but only after his death, the Papacy agreed to have the Inquisition in Portugal deal with sodomy. In 1562 Pope Pius IV ordered that Portuguese inquisi­tors punish sodomy, but as in Aragon according to the laws of the municipality in which the offense occurred, with pun­ishment either burning or scourging and the galleys.
The Coutumes of Touraine-Anjou were reflected in the Etablissements of St. Louis. Noting that his action was in accord with papal decretals, Louis ordered confiscation of property and burning of sodomites, as did Philippe de Beaumanoir in Les Coutumes de Beauvaisis (1283). A collection of statutes made in 1260 at Orleans prescribed confiscation of prop­erty by the crown and mutilation, castra­tion, and burning for the first, second, and third offense for women as well as for men. Philip IV (1285-1314) solved all questions of jurisdiction between canon, municipal, and royal courts by reserving them all for the crown. In the trial of the Templars, Philip dominated the pope, the inquisitors readily cooperating with the king.
The Norwegian law of Gulathing ca. 1250 permanently outlawed sodomites.
Conclusion. The revival of Ro­man law and its reception by the legisla­tors and jurists of Western Europe, com­pleted in Germany in the sixteenth century, meant the virtually unanimous adoption of the death penalty prescribed by the book of Leviticus and the Christian Roman Emperors. Backed by the hallowed traditions of Roman justice, the intoler­ance of homosexual expression lasted until Beccaria, Voltaire, and the thinkers of the Enlightenment put an end to what they considered part of the barbarity of the Middle Ages.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1980; Michael Goodich, The Unmentionable Vice: Homosexuality in the Later Medieval Period, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1979.
William A. Percy

Law, Germanic
The law codes of the Germanic tribes that overran the Western half of the Roman Empire in the fifth century are known collectively as the Leges barbarorum or Germanic law. Recorded in Medieval Latin at various times between the fifth and ninth centuries, they imi­tated Roman law in codifying what until then had been an oral tradition of custom­ary law. They departed from the geographi­cal uniformity which the Empire had gradu­ally and somewhat imperfectly imposed upon legal status and legal practice in that they were Stammes- und Standesrechte, sets of legal norms that depended upon the tribal membership and social status of the juridical subject, not upon where he lived. Their adoption contributed to the particu­larism of the early Middle Ages that ended only with the triumph of codes applicable to the entire territory of nation-states and embodying the principle of the equality of all citizens before the law which the Enlightenment achieved at the close of the eighteenth century.
Frequently cited as evidence that the primitive Germanic tribes punished male homosexuality with death is the passage in the twelfth chapter of the Germania of Tacitus which tells how the Germans drowned ignavos et imbelles et of seidr, sorcery, for which they could on occasion exact drastic penalties. Accord­ing to an account in Historia Norwegiae, Rognvaldr Rettilbeini, a wizard versed in magical lore, was drowned in Hadaland at the command of his father King Harald because of the disgrace that he had in­curred by busying himself with an art that stamped him an as aigi (in the Latin original ob usitatem inertissimae aitis ignominiam infamatus).
A separate matter is the so-called Moorleichenfiage, the problem posed by humanremains found in bogs and marshes in a condition supporting the belief that these are the corpses of individuals either sacrificed or executed. The full range of motives and circumstances behind their deaths remains obscure because written evidence for the practice is slim. However, it is clear that the victim was meant to disappear from sight and never return as a malevolent ghost, hence the custom of sinking him in morasses and bog holes that were imagined as a fathomless abyss.
The actual texts of the codes from the early Middle Ages contain no such provisions. The Codex Euricianus for the West Gothic subjects of King Euric (475-76), the Bieviaiium Alaricianum (a summary of Roman law for the "Roman" subjects of the Visigoths, not a compen­dium of Germanic custom), the Lex Visigothorum of the sixth and seventh centu­ries, the Edictum Theodehci (supposedly before 507), the Lex Burgundionum (after 480), the P actus Legis Salicae (ca. 507), the Pactus Legis Ribvaiiae (seventh century), the Pactus Legis Alamannomm (seventh century), and the Edictus Rothari (643) make no mention of homosexual offenses. The last, the Lex Baiuvariorum, Lex Thuringorum, and Lex Saxonum were all completed before 900. New redactions of most of these laws were promulgated under the Carolingians. The Anglo-Saxon dooms from Aethelbert of Kent (560-616) to the Danish King Canute the Great (1016-1038) are the greatest collections of Germanic laws and were written in Anglo-Saxon corpoie infames in swamps with a basket of wickerwork over their heads. The last of the three Latin terms has usually been taken to mean "sodomites." However, close philological analysis of the entire passage and of the phrase in question shows that Tacitus was describing a violation of military discipline, cowardice or failure to perform one's soldierly duty, and not a sexual offense. This three-part Latin ex­pression renders the Old Norse word argr, with the notion of passivity and lack of courage associated with the passive-effemi­nate male rather than sexual behavior per se. In any case Tacitus was exaggerating Germanic virtue, bravery, and sexual continence to condemn Roman vice, cowardice, and licentiousness. Ammianus Marcellinus and Procopius, on the other hand, testify that Germanic warriors en­joyed pederastic acts with impunity and commonly indulged in them.
The Germanic codes generally omit discussion of penalties for homosex­ual behavior, and the Icelandic sagas show that such conduct was a purely private matter entailing, to be sure, frightful igno­miny for the passive adult partner, but no penal retribution on the part of the tribe or local community. Among the Germanic peoples the imposition of sexual morality was exercised entirely by the family as an internal matter. Most experts writing on this question agree that intolerance in sexual matters stems from the Judaic in­fluence on ecclesiastical law, fundamen­tally alien to Germanic mentality and custom. The introduction of criminal sanctions against sodomy was the work of the Christian church. In citing Tacitus to justify the death penalty for homosexual "degenerates" and "racedefilers," National Socialist writers of the 1930s were guilty of monumental anachronisms character­istic of the confused and irrational think­ing by which they validated the sodomy delusion in seemingly contemporary terms.
It is true, however, that Germanic peoples associated passive homosexuality with cowardice and also with the practice rather than in Latin; not one specifically refers to sodomy.
The Visigothic Law, which alone among Germanic laws treated prostitu­tion in detail, provided that a woman could divorce her husband if he committed sod­omy with another male or forced her into adultery against her will. The significant point is that tale nefas fieri nequaquam inter Christianos oportet, "such wrongdo­ing ought nowhere to occur among Chris­tians," revealing the foreign and churchly origin of the sanction.
Penitentials, the decisions of church councils, and decrees of local bish­ops do not belong under this subject, as they derive from Biblical and canon law and not from Germanic custom. The very language in which they are couched re­flects at every point the influence of the Latin text of the Scriptures and of Patristic thought. In this vein King Reccesvinth ca. 654 had imposed the penalty of castration on sodomites, and the Visigothic king Egica (687-701), in a message to the sixteenth Council of Toledo (693), urged the as­sembled dignitaries to "extirpate that obscene crime committed by abusers of themselves with mankind, whose fearful conduct defiles the charm of decent living and provokes from heaven the wrath of the supreme Judge." Upon receiving the state­ment of the council he reinforced it with an edict of his own prescribing not only castration but also the death penalty for all found guilty of the crime.
Codes in the Germanic languages from the later Middle Ages that condemn homosexual practices use terms such as sodomy and buggery that stem from Chris­tian legend and belief, not from native tradition. That medieval lawmakers had to employ such exotic expressions [the one of Semitic, the other ultimately of Turkic origin) shows how foreign the very notion of the offense was to the Germanic culture of antiquity. The ultimate acceptance of the taboo among Germanic folk must be ascribed to Christian indoctrination, even if underlying pagan attitudes linking pas­sive male homosexuality with cowardice and sorcery to some extent reinforced the disapproval. Accusations of homosexual­ity did not figure notably in the witchcraft delusion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, even in Germanic lands where it raged the most fiercely.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Vern Bullough, Sexual Variance in Society and History, New York: John Wiley, 1976; Hermann Conrad, "Das Wehrstraf recht der germanischen und fränkischen Zeit," Zeitschrift für die gesamte Stra­frechtswissenschaft, 56 (1937), 713-15; Rudolf His, Geschichte des deutschen Strafrechts bis zur Karolina, Munich and Berlin: Oldenbourg, 1928; Folke Ström, On the Sacral Origin of the Germanic Death Penalties, Stockholm: Wahlstrom &Widstrand, 1942, pp. 48-57, 171-88; Josef Weisweiler, "Beiträge zur Be­deutungsentwicklung germanischer Wörter für sittliche Begriffe. I. Germ. "arga-," Indogermanische Forschungen, 41(1923), 16-29. Warren Johansson and William A. Percy

Law, Municipal
Municipal ordinances against sodomy were first enacted in Italy in the later Middle Ages as the slackening of imperial power produced a situation of de facto local autonomy.
The Ecclesiastical Background. The papacy accused of sodomy the impe­rial forces it was fighting in Italy. In 1233 the Curia enlisted the religious enthusi­asm of the newly founded mendicant friars (Franciscans and Dominicans, who were directing the Inquisition in Southern France). Manipulated by the popes and the Guelph (pro-papal) bankers and merchants, the friars denounced the sexual laxity of the Ghibelline nobles who supported the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and his sons, and insisted upon the execution of heretics, sodomites, and other offenders against morality. At Ancona, Bologna, whose university had revived the study of Roman law, and Perugia, lay confraterni­ties of the orders of friars received author­ity to prosecute sodomites.
Although falling into disuse or repealed following the Ghibelline victory at Cortenuova in 1237, the statutes were reenacted after the Guelph triumph at Benevento in 1266. Inquisitors branded noble Ghibellines as pederasts and adul­terers, while other mendicants defamed heretics and Jews, the latter with the accu­sation of ritual murder. In 1255-61 Hum­bert of Romans, the Dominican general, advised brothers in Bologna, Mantua, and Faenza to suppress that "evil filth," sod­omy. A Dominican brother, a Guelph, introduced statutes in Bologna in 1265-66 ordering state assistance in prosecuting heretics and sodomites. Burning replaced mild penalties in Perugia in 1309, and its code of 1342 ordered that eight men be chosen from each of the five quarters of the city to denounce sodomites. Most Italian communes, as in Sicily, enacted the pen­alty of burning for sodomites and confisca­tion of their property, sometimes as at Ascoli Piceno offering a bounty to inform­ers and collaborators in prosecution. Pisa fined those harboring sodomites 100 lire and at Bologna the building in which sod­omy occurred could be burnt along with its inhabitants. Every important city-state persecuted sodomites throughout the Italian Renaissance, including Leonardo da Vinci and Benvenuto Cellini.
Although secular, these codes referred frequently to Scripture, the Patris­tic writers, papal decretals, Canon law, the Decretum of Gratian, and Thomas Aqui­nas. On the other hand, there is no allusion whatever in them to the "feelings of the people/' they appealed to no plebiscite or democratic process for their justification. Modern apologists for the Church, who claim that these laws were enacted be­cause "the way people felt was utterly different from what it is now," are simply inventingarationale that in medieval times would not have interested, let alone per­suaded anyone who held power. s Municipal Ordinances Proper.
Siena, Perugia, and Florence enacted the longest ordinances against sodomy. In 1305
Fra Giordano condemned Florence as a veritable Sodom where fathers encouraged sons to prostitute themselves, and in the next century Matteo ascribed the floods that destroyed one-third of the city to the widespread practice of sodomy. In 1325 the Podesta graduated penalties according to the age of the culprit and the frequency of his offenses: pederasty was punished by castration. A boy who submitted volun­tarily to the act was beaten, driven through the city naked, or fined 50 lire. The panderer, his accomplice, or a habitual crimi­nal suffered a fine of 500 lire; if unable to pay the sum, he had his hand cut off; if he had no hand, then his foot. A father who induced his son to commit the act was punished likewise. The dwelling, field, or other premises in which the act was committed with the owner's consent was to be destroyed or laid waste. Any man found in suspicious circumstances with a boy to whom he was not related was pre­sumed guilty of the offense and punished accordingly. "Rogues," "imposters," and foreign criminals, of which Florence was notoriously full, received particularly severe punishment, and boxes were placed about the city to receive anonymous de­nunciations. In 1403 the Signoria created the Questa to protect public morality and especially to suppress sodomy, though favoring female prostitution, and in 1432 established the Official of the Curfew and the Convents to suppress sodomy. Siena in 1421, and other Italian cities during the same period, took similar measures. In the 1490s the Dominican Savonarola ordered exposure for the first offense, tying to a pillar for the second, and burning for the third.
Linking sodomites with heretics and Patarenes (a mob of hyperenthusiasts who had flourished in eleventh-century northern Italy), in 1262 and 1270 Siena expelled those who did not confess within a week and a day and confiscated their goods, and on the first Sunday in every month expelled members in every cate­gory. In 1309-10 the commune ordained a fine of 300 lire for the first offense, the culprit being hung by his virile member in the town square if he did not pay within a month. In 1324 it ordered men to track down sodomites "in order to honor the Lord, ensure the peace, maintain the good morals and praiseworthy life of the people" and quoted Ephesians 5:6 that the crime if not punished would bring God's ire down upon the town. Bologna punished sodo­mites with burning or perpetual exile in 1259.
Venice. The Adriatic city's illicit sexual culture, in which even some of the most distinguished citizens occasionally participated, included prostitutes, mis­tresses, street people, and sodomites. The state increasingly interfered with sexual conduct after the oligarchy took charge by closing the Grand Council to new mem­bers in 1297. Rhetoric and prosecutions for sodomy grew during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as Jews were being confined to the periphery. In 1458 the Council of Ten tightened surveillance and increased the number of patrolers, explain­ing that "God . . . detesting the sin of sodomy ... brought down his wrath upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and soon thereafter flooded and destroyed the whole world for such horrible sins; [hence] our most wise ancestors sought with all their laws and experts to liberate our city from such a dangerous divine judgment." God had not punished any other sin so harshly!
Records of the night police, which began in 1348, mention prosecution in that year of two servants who shared the same bed. Having confessed under torture to taking the active role in "unnatural intercourse, one was burned alive between the columns of justice before the Doge's palace. After the discovery of a circle in­volving at least fifteen nobles in 1406, the Council of Ten, which in one case held that sodomy on board would cause God to destroy the fleet, took over jurisdiction of this most dangerous crime from the night police. In 1497 the Doge heard a Francis­can monk ascribe the plague to blasphemy, usury, selling justice, and "the societies of sodomy" and convents of nuns that were really "whorehouses and public bordel­los." The Ten labeled sodomy "the most foul crime," "the most infamous sin," and "a diabolical desire."
The Ten, which offered 2,000 lire to anyone making a denunciation that resulted in conviction, uncovered groups of up to twenty, several of which in the early periods involved Florentines or people who had been in Florence. By the fifteenth century Venice had a widespread subcul­ture, centering around apothecary shops, schools of gymnastics, singing, music, dance, and the abacus; pastry shops; and certain dark areas. The authorities regu­larly distinguished between actives, who were burned, and passives (pathics), often young following the immemorial Medi­terranean pattern, who normally received lashes, fines, and imprisonment. Pueri (who might be as young as ten) were seldom even prosecuted in the fourteenth cen­tury, 14 years being considered adult, but after 1424 those under 14 were "not to be freely absolved as in the past . . . but . . . subject to a minimum penalty of three months in jail and in addition ought to receive from 12 to 20 lashes in the torture chamber." Occasionally boys were prose­cuted as actives and older males as pas­sives. For capital sentences in the early fifteenth century decapitation and then burning supplanted burning alive. One jailed individual had undergone brutal prolonged torture that damaged his geni­tals and other bodily parts,- the doctor advised amputating his arms to save his life.
Between 1326 and 1359 five indi­viduals were prosecuted; 1351-75, 8,-1376-1400, 3; 1401-25, 87; 1426-50, 81, 1451-75, 134; and 1476-1500, 196. Be­tween 1326 and 1500 514 individuals, including 66 nobles, were prosecuted, in 279 cases of which 78 involved boys, 34 females, and 33 nobles. The Ten com­plained to the pope that clerical sodo­mites, escaping persecution by secular courts, were not being sufficiently pun­ished by courts canon, merely being ban­ished from Venetian territory by the Coun­cil. Sexual immorality was commonly ascribed to those accused of heresy.
Elsewhere in Europe. Communes in Northern Europe also punished sodo­mites. The first documented burning oc­curred in Ghent when on September 28, 1292 John, a local knifemaker, was burned near the pillory. The same source docu­mented the banishment of an adulteress and the burning of her house. The last previous documented execution had taken place in 521, shortly before the reign of Justinian. In the fourteenth century the legal school of Orleans synthesized the Fuero real and the Siete Partidas of Al­fonso the Wise in a code punishing the first sodomitical offense by castration, the second by dismemberment, and the third by burning. In Portugal as in Aragon in the sixteenth century the Inquisition tried and punished sodomites according to the stat­utes of the municipalities in which the trial occurred, but in Castile the munici­palities themselves did so.
In Germany, where the Magde­burg Law had ignored it, sodomy entered the law codes in the sixteenth century with the Bamberger Halsgerichtsordnung IConstitutio Criminalis Bambergensis) of 1507, evidently inspired by the Italian jurists of the preceding century and the Italian municipalities. The provisions of this code became Article 116 of the Peinliche Gerichtsordnung Kaiser Karls V (Constitutio Criminalis Carolina), enacted by the Imperial Diet in Regensburg on July 29, 1532. This article decreed death for Unkeusch wider die Natur [unchastity against nature] "in accordance with the common law." Exceedingly influential as was the Carolina as far east as Russia and down to the French Revolution, it found no reception in England or its colonies. England with its strong crown saw no municipal ordinances and no Inquisition. In 1533, the year following the Carolina but apparently independent of it, Parlia­ment enacted the statute 25 Henry VHI c. 6 ordering death by hanging for the crime of "buggery with mankind or beast." Despite much discussion of the origins of this enactment, the precise reasons for its adoption in 1533 remain unknown.
Conclusion. The particularism of medieval law allowed for local variations in the punishment for sodomy after the lawlessness of the Dark Ages, but never toleration. Public exposure and humili­ation of the offender and even the oblitera­tion of the site of his crime expressed late medieval society's fanatical campaign against "unnatural" forms of sexual ex­pression. While the statutes were abol­ished long ago, their enforcement left in the popular mind into the twentieth cen­tury a legacy of fear and loathing.
See also Police; Sixteenth-Cen­tury Legislation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Michael Goodich, The Unmentionable Vice: Homosexuality in the Later Medieval Period, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1979.
William A. Percy

Law, Roman
See Rome, Ancient.

Law, United States
Homosexuality is relevant to a number of aspects of American law. His­torically, the criminal offense of sodomy has been pivotal for the legal situation of homosexuals in post-Classical civilization. The sexual negativism enshrined in Europe's sodomy laws, a type of condemna­tion which is scarcely a cultural universal, came to North America in colonial times as part of the heritage of English common law. New themes emerged, however, dur­ing the second half of the twentieth cen­tury as decriminalization spread among the most populous and important Ameri­can states, in keeping with a trend evident throughout the industrialized world. As elsewhere, sodomy law reform proved not the end of the road, but the beginning, for ancillary problems stemming from old prejudices remained.
The Criminal Law. In the Eng­lish-speaking world, the subject of homo­sexuality and the law was placed on the agenda by the Report of the Wolfenden Committee in Britain in 1957. Until then it had been tacitly assumed, if not explic­itly stated, that homosexual activity (characterized as "sodomy," "buggery," or "the infamous crime against nature") was immoral and illegal, and that the individ­ual engaging in such conduct had no rights which the law or society needed to recog­nize in any way - apart from the rights accorded to all defendants in criminal cases, though reputable lawyers often refused to defend individuals accused of homosexual offenses.
The Wolfenden Report had con­siderable impact in the United States. Yet its reception occurred in the context of an important fact: the American states are sovereign in the sense that each has its own criminal code and civil code and its own regulations governing state employ­ees, together with a court system that hears cases arising under state law and appeals from the decisions of courts of first instance. To be sure, no state law can stand if found in conflict with the United States Constitution, and this principle of review of legislative acts by courts whose mem­bers serve for long terms or even for Ufe has served several minority groups seeking to affirm their rights. The American Constitution is the outcome of the fusion of French and Italian political and legal theory with British and colonial law and administrative practice. Hence in the United States the Constitution limits the power both of Congress and of the individ­ual state legislatures, and the state consti­tutions do the same for their respective jurisdictions. By contrast, in Great Britain the power of Parliament is absolute: there is no plea of "unconstitutionality." Al­though the United Kingdom has adhered to the European Convention on Human Rights, providing for the hearing of cases by a tribunal in Strasbourg, the decisions of the tribunal are not absolutely binding on member states. In the United States, as indicated, the Constitution is supreme. With reference to homosexuality, how­ever, the federal law codes and the federal judiciary are chiefly significant for such issues as federal employment, military service and the rights of service personnel, and immigration and naturalization.
The first efforts at sodomy law reform in the United States were influ­enced by English thinking. The Wolfen­den Report of 1957 made a classical liberal case for repeal of the criminal laws against private homosexual activity between consenting adults; ten years later Parlia­ment acted on its recommendations, de­criminalizing homosexual conduct be­tween consenting adults in England and Wales. About half the American states have f oliowed suit, though in several major instances the law was struck down by the decision of a state appeliate court rather than by the action of the legislature. In the other half of the states nearly all forms of homosexual intimacy involving penetra­tion are still criminal, though prosecu­tions (which were never common for the full offense of sodomy) are today ever rarer. The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) upheld the constitutionality of the Geor­gia sodomy law, ruling that there was no right of privacy in regard to homosexual behavior. Nonetheless, the constitution­ality of sodomy laws may still be tested in regard to other issues such as the estab­lishment of religion clause of the First Amendment and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth. Canada (1969) and New Zealand (1987) have repealed the criminal laws on their entire territory, while in Australia the individual states still vary in their legal norms.
If prosecutions for the act of sod­omy were uncommon even in the past, charges of loitering or solicitation for inde­cent purposes were frequently brought against homosexual men, often as the result of entrapment by plainclothesmen of the vice squad who accosted them in known cruising areas. Minor as the actual charge may have been, if the facts became known to an individual's employer or family, the outcome could be a ruined career and a personal tragedy. Also, the attorney who was willing to represent the defendant in such a case was often concerned only with extracting from him as large a fee as pos­sible. Lesbians ran afoul of the criminal law principally through statutes against cross-dressing in public, as most of the repressive activity of the state in regard to the female was aimed at the prostitute with a male clientele. Historically, the sodomy laws - the ultimate linchpin of all legal discrimination against homosexu­als - are grounded in religious horror of sexual activity between males.
Gay Couples. The union of man and woman is consecrated in law and custom by the act of marriage, which conveys legally specified rights and duties to both partners. Until quite recently, couples of the same sex lived outside the law, which was not a protector but an oppressor. The property rights of the couple languished in a legal Umbo; if there was a dispute between them, neither party could venture to bring the matter to court, as both would have been exposed to prosecu­tion and imprisonment, or at the very least to social ostracism and economic ruin. But with the end of the criminal laws and the onset of the movement for the recognition of gay rights, cases involving gay couples began to reach the courts.
The landmark decision was the one rendered in the case of a heterosexual couple, Marvin v. Marvin, decided by the California Supreme Court in 1976. The court first declared that marital property laws do not apply to persons who are not legally married, but recognizing that unmarried couples had become a fact of American social life, the court held that the parties to such unions "may order their economic affairs as they choose." The fact that a couple is living together outside of wedlock does not invalidate such agreements by mutual consent. A gay couple living together is free to enter a contract to divide income, property, and all other assets as the two see fit, just as if they were partners in a business or any two competent adults conducting a business transaction. In states that have adopted the Marvin ruling, such a contract is le­gally binding and enforceable. Yet the question remains open as to what behav­ior, circumstances, and conduct have cre­ated an implied agreement to share prop­erty.
A couple seeking to guard against unforeseen problems and conflicts in the future will, therefore, formulate a contract which may be as broad or as specific as the parties choose. The contract will be en­forceable in court only to the extent that it concerns personal and real property. Pro­visions for the support and custody of children will be enforced by a court only if the judge finds that the provisions reflect "the best interests of the children." A contract may also refer to financial obliga­tions assumed by the couple on a specified basis over a future time span.
Under the law of intestate suc­cession, if one member of a gay couple dies without having willed his property to the other, the estate passes to the relatives of the deceased, who, if they disapprove of the relationship or actively resent the presence of the partner, can simply dispos­sess him and treat him as a perfect stranger with no claims whatever, even if he has been intimate with the lover for many years.
Child Custody. The custody of children conceived in a heterosexual un­ion is commonly the most difficult prob­lem a previously married homosexual or lesbian faces. If there is a court battle over custody, the heterosexual partner to the marriage will try to use facts, accusations, and insinuations about the deviant life­style, identity, and behavior of the rival party to win his case. The defense is that one's sexual identity is irrelevant to being a good and devoted parent. If the spouses agree on the custody of the children, the court will almost certainly ratify the deci­sion without prying into the details of the parents' private life. Court battles arise when the parents cannot agree, and par­ticularly when the heterosexual parent wants to deny the bisexual or homosexual one virtually all custody rights. The latter faces a difficult uphill battle in court, especially if he or she is living openly with a lover. In the last few years, however, some courts have renounced the practice of automatically denying custody to the homosexual parent. Even where custody is not granted, the parent may have visita­tion rights, which means that he or she can see and spend time with the child under specified conditions. During most of the twentieth century, the mother was almost always awarded custody unless she was found to be an "unfit" parent - as lesbians usually were in disputed cases. In practice, the judge has almost complete discretion in awarding custody where the parents are in conflict, and even in restricting visita­tion rights by forbidding the mere pres­ence of the homosexual parent's new lover. Because of the moral stigma still attaching to homosexual behavior, the odds are still against the unconventional parent in a custody dispute.
Employment. There is no federal legislation to protect homosexuals in employment. In the absence of local or state protections, employers may refuse to hire, decline to promote, and even demote or dismiss a homosexual employee solely on the grounds of "immoral conduct" or a similar accusation. Fellow workers may complain to an employer that they resent the presence of a homosexual in their midst. Formany gay people the open acknowledge­ment of their orientation spells the likeli­hood of the loss of employment or of op­portunity for promotion. Beginning with World War II, "fair employment practices" Statutes and regulations of various kinds were enacted at the federal and state levels which at first prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, religion, or national origin, but not of sexual orientation (or "affectional preference"), which became an issue only when it was raised by gay rights organizations in the 1970s. Since then some 50 towns, cities, and states have enacted laws extending the protec­tion of these anti-discrimination meas­ures to homosexuals. The homosexual who is most exposed to prejudice is one who works with children in any capacity, not only because of fear of child molestation but also because such an individual is deemed an unsuitable role model for the young. Nevertheless teachers' unions have fought for the inclusion of anti-discrimi­nation clauses in their contracts, and the devotion and frustration tolerance which the homosexual teacher or counselor is able to bring to his or her work speak for rather than against fairness in such cases.
Housing. This matter poses a special problem for the homosexual, be­cause most housing is oriented toward families, and the permanently single indi­vidual is often marginalized by society's assumption that the status is merely tran­sitory. Landlords can, where no legal pro­tection exists, refuse to rent an apartment to an individual or to a pair of individuals whom they believe to be homosexual, again on the grounds that their presence would be "morally offensive" to the other ten­ants, to families with children, and the like. Also, if one member of a gay couple dies, the survivor may find himself with no rights comparable to those of a hetero­sexual widow or widower and liable to be evicted from the premises at the landlord's whim. In cities where gentrification is proceeding apace, the landlord may find it very much in his own interest to expel the partner and then raise the rent enormously. On the other hand, cases involving refusal to admit a homosexual as a guest in a hotel, motel, or restaurant, in contrast with the type of discrimination formerly ; practiced on religious or racial grounds, ; are quite rare.
Military. The unfitness of homo­sexuals for military service was taken so much for granted in the past that the Senate Subcommittee of 1950 that inves­tigated Senator Joseph McCarthy's charges of "sex perverts in government" could only congratulate the military for its ag­gressiveness in "ferreting out sex perverts." Only in the 1970s did a few brave service­men and women dare to challenge the long-standing policy of exclusion, usually with no legal success. The courts repeat­edly upheld the right to the armed services to discharge known homosexuals, as in the well-publicized cases of Leonard Matlovich in the Army and Vernon Berg in the Navy. The upper echelons of the military are reputed to be virtually paranoid on the subject of homosexual activity in their midst. Those who were separated from the military for homosexual behavior often received undesirable or dishonorable dis­charges that handicapped them for life, making certain kinds of employment unobtainable because of the moral stigma with which theya had been branded. In individual cases it was possible to have the official record of the discharge altered in favor of the ex-serviceman, particularly if the rest of his conduct had been exem­plary. The federal courts continue to hear appeals from military personnel who ac­knowledge their homosexual orientation but claim that it does not impair their fitness to serve.
Immigration and Naturalization. This area was the first in which the law actually took notice of homosexuality as a condition recognized by psychiatry. Until the twentieth century the courts every­where acted on the assumption that homosexual conduct stemmed from will­ful depravity, not from an abnormal men­tal state. A law of 1917 had excluded pro­spective immigrants with "constitutional psychopathic inferiority," and the Walter McCarran Act of 1950, adopted at a moment when McCarthyism had raised the issue of "sex perversion," specified that homosexuality was grounds for denial of immigration and naturalization. The United States is virtually unique among the nations of the world in seeking to exclude foreigners from its territory solely on grounds of homosexuality, but despite severe criticism of the law, it has not been repealed, though some federal courts have decided in favor of homosex­ual plaintiffs in particular instances.
AIDS and the Law. The discov­ery in 1981 of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) as a condition particu­larly affecting homosexual men created a whole new series of legal issues with which the American legal system has had to contend. Despite the data accumulated by medical investigators as to the specific modes of transmission of AIDS, the gen­eral public quickly gained the false notion that the condition was highly contagious and could be spread even by casual and indirect forms of contact. The pervasive fear of contagion, anxiety about casual transmission, and the stigmatization of the AIDS carrier in the public mind has led toa demand for measures to protect public health at the expense of civil liberties, particularly the liberties of persons diag­nosed as having AIDS or falling into "high risk" categories. Traditional public health practices - screening, testing, reporting, contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine - have all been invoked. At the same time organizations defending the rights of people with AIDS have vehemently opposed most if not all of these measures. A further problem is AIDS-Related Complex (ARC) and even the test finding of seropositivity, which can become grounds for discrimina­tion and exclusion.
The American courts have dealt with AIDS in the context of statutes pro­tecting victims of disease and handicap from discrimination - statutes that ironi­cally are far more widespread than ones protecting the rights of homosexuals. So a homosexual diagnosed as having AIDS can I appeal to the courts for the protection of I rights that are not extended to his sexual orientation. However, it is a fact that even within the ranks of health workers there is such intense fear of contracting ADDS through repeated contact with patients that some physicians, dentists, and hospi­tal employees have refused to treat such individuals. The common law does not impose any duty upon even a qualified physician to treat a patient unless a con­tractual relationship exists. Here the legal obligation is narrower than the ethical tradition, as it has been enshrined in the Hippocratic Oath.
Claims for public assistance to people with AIDS fall into the sphere of social policy, but where a state has created the right of indigent persons to support in case of illness, this right applies to the penniless individual diagnosed with the condition. The special problem arises of the ability and willingness of municipal governments to provide the facilities (hospices, intensive care units, and the like) required to cope with the mounting number of AIDS cases. Here AIDS activist organizations have labored mightily to bring the issue before the legislative bod­ies and the general public to secure fund­ing for such facilities.
Individuals in "total institutions" such as prisons, military units and the like can be subjected to forms of involuntary screening and isolation, with minimal concern for confidentiality, as medical records are frequently accessible to a whole range of authorities - and even to office staff in the institution. While the armed services have the option of promptly sepa­rating personnel found to be carriers of AIDS, prisons for obvious reasons cannot find such an easy solution. Prison officials are required under the terms of the Eighth Amendment to protect inmates from in­fection and to care for those who develop the disease. The social order of the prison entails a considerable amount of coerced homosexual behavior in which weaker inmates are subjected to sexual penetra­tion of a kind that exposes them to high risk for AIDS, and although Federal courts have held that a prisoner has the right to protection from such abuse, enforcing that right within the context of the informal power system of the prison is exceedingly difficult.
A wider area of the concern is the wish of insurance companies to exclude real and potential AIDS carriers from ac­cess to coverage - which in practice means measures aimed at identifying and exclud­ing homosexual men, or demanding higher premiums for policies that cover death from AIDS-related illness. Here tradition­ally influential insurance companies have crossed swords with gay rights activists in seeking to gain favorable actions from the courts and legislatures.
Immigration and travel are also issues impacted by the AIDS crisis, as one country after another has adopted meas­ures calling for obligatory testing of visi­tors or of foreign nationals remaining more than a specified time on its territory. Such policies fall within its competence as a sovereign state and could be challenged, if at all, only in its own courts, where the foreigner does not enjoy the rights of a citizen.
The greatest threat to homosex­ual rights posed by the AIDS crisis has been the new relevance given to clauses in the various charters of human rights that allow any right to be abridged in the inter­est of "public health and morals." While the latter obstacle was still in vigor as late as the beginning of the 1960s, it was begin­ning to fade away when the threat of AIDS gave immediacy to the former one. The public health issue has been the perfect pretext for advocates of a traditional reli­gious morality to claim that homosexuals should be denied equalrights because "their sexual activity spreads AIDS." This is, strictly speaking, true only of male homo­sexuals, not of lesbians, who are virtually immune to venereal disease because of the obvious anatomical differences in their mode of sexual union, but the ignorant and fearful have extended the discrimination to them as well. So AIDS has spawned a new handicap, in current practice if not in ultimate accomplishment, for those advo­cating full legal equality for homosexual men and women in contemporary society.
Conclusions. In keeping with the European origin of the defining traits of American civilization, the legal problems facing homosexuals emanate from the sodomy legislation of late medieval and Renaissance Europe. Yet the range of top­ics covered in this article points to a sec­ond important determinant: in a context suffused with age-old popular prejudice, the excision of these laws does not in and of itself resolve all difficulties. Permanent change can be achieved only through manifold and patient efforts toward legal reform combined with the spread of more accurate knowledge of human sexuality. Nonetheless, citizens of the United States are fortunate to enjoy not only the com­mon law traditions of individual liberty, but also such distinctively American pos­sessions as the Bill of Rights and the prin­ciple of judicial review. These resources offer protections and opportunities lack­ing - it scarcely needs remarking - not only in Third World and Communist countries, but even in Britain itself. The struggle for gay rights legitimately belongs to the ongoing effort to realize the inherent prom­ise of American democracy.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Roberta Achtenberg, ed., Sexual Orientation and the Law, New York: Clark Boardman, 1985; Hayden Curry and Denis Clifford, A Legal Guide for Lesbian a) Gay Couples, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1980) Harlon L. Dalton, Scott Bums, and the Yale AIDS Law Project, AIDS and the Law: A Guide for the Public, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987; Richard D. Mohr, Gays/Justice: A Study of Ethics, Society, and Law, New York: Columbia University Press, 1988; Thomas B. Stoddard, E. Carrington Boggan, et al., The Rights of Gay People, revised ed., New York: Bantam Books, 1983.
Warzen Johansson

Lawrence, David Herbert (1885-1930)
English novelist, poet, critic, and painter. Born in a mining area of Notting­hamshire, Lawrence derived much of the problematic of his work from the tension between his coalminer father, represent­ing for him the physical and the elemental, and his mother, a former schoolteacher, who stood for the world of higher culture, politeness, and civilization. Having at­tended a two-year teacher training course in Nottingham (his only higher educa­tion), Lawrence wrote two early novels, The White Peacock (1911) and The Ties-passer (1912), while teaching at Croydon. In 1912 he eloped with the German-born Frieda von Richthofen Weekley, and the two led a bohemian life of wandering on the continent until the outbreak of World War I. During this period he wrote and published his first masterpiece, Sons and Lovers (1913), an intensely autobiographi­cal novel.
The war years were ones of excep­tional strain for the Lawrences, whose patriotism was challenged. In 1914 he published a short story entitled "The Prussian Officer," which dwells on the sado-masochistic potential of a relation­ship between an older male and his subor­dinate in the context of amood that blamed "Prussian militarism" for the conflict. During this period the novelist interacted with the Bloomsbury circle, and found the sexual nonconformity of the group dis­turbing. Nonetheless, Lawrence became acquainted with the draft of E. M. Forster's homosexual novel Maurice (written in 1913, but not published until 1971), and on it he later modeled his own heterosexual novel of erotic frankness, Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928), which for a considerable time was available to the general public only in an expurgated version. Lawrence had been earlier influenced by the homosexual theo­rist Edward Carpenter, and by Walt Whitman, one of Carpenter's major sources.
Women in Love (1921) has, de­spite the title, an extraordinary emphasis on the male love affair (though it is non-genitally expressed) between the wealthy Gerald Crich and the schoolteacher Rupert Birkin. These aspects were further explored in the "Prologue" to the book, which Lawrence withheld from publication. The theme of male bonding is treated in a less satisfactory political context in Kangaroo (1923), which is set mainly in Australia.
Throughout Lawrence's later wanderings in Italy, Mexico, and New Mexico he struggled to achieve what he regarded as a proper balance in his relation with Frieda. The sexual theories presented in his prose writings reveal the impress of Sigmund Freud, though mingled with remnants of Victorian prudery. As late as 1929 he asserted that "masturbation is the deepest and most dangerous cancer of our civilization." In his paintings, how­ever, he strove to capture images of "phal­lic consciousness." Having lived a life that was consistent in its intense produc­tivity, Lawrence died of tuberculosis at the age of 44.
After World War II the eloquent advocacy of the critic F. R. Leavis brought the reputation of D. H. Lawrence to its zenith. A number of his works were filmed in a richly colored style that created the image of Edwardian opulence for the later twentieth century. Some have noted that the admiration for the primitive and irra­tional in Lawrence's work sometimes borders on fascism, and that he seems in some respects to have been an intellectual who turned on the intellect itself because of his failure of self-acceptance and inte­gration. Although Leavis and others have hailed him as a model of sexual sanity, his inability to come to terms with the strong homosexual component in his essentially bisexual makeup renders his example problematic.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Paul Delany, D. H. Lawrence's Nightmare: The Writer and His Circle in the Years of the Great War, New York: Basic Books, 1978.
Wayne R. Dynes

Lawrence, Thomas Edward (1888-1935)
British soldier and writer. His friends remembered his boyish looks, impish sense of humor, and many-sided geniality. He was famous for his legendary military activities in the Middle East dur­ing World War I, which earned him the sobriquet "Lawrence of Arabia," and for his account of those activities in Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph.
Lawrence was born in Tremadoc (Wales) and educated at Oxford. After he finished his history study, he worked as an archaeologist in Carchemish (Syria) until war broke out. He then served as an intel­ligence officer, first in Cairo and later with the Arab army, which was allied with the British against the Turkish overlord. His strategic insight and his inspiring example helped make the Arab revolt a success. While serving colonial interests, he tried to help the Arabs politically at the Peace Conference of Versailles (1919) and worked as an advisor to the Colonial Sec­retary (1921-22). In the meantime he had become a folk hero as "the Uncrowned King of Arabia," an ascription he in part liked, but mostly hated because he felt unworthy of it.
Lawrence's torture and rape by the Turks in Dar'a (Syria) in November, 1917, when he was imprisoned for a short time, was an intense personal humiliation, even more traumatic because it made him aware of hidden desires within himself. The writing of the epic confession Seven Pillars (1919-22) made it absolutely clear to him that it had not been "a triumph" at all. His integrity had been "irrevocably lost" personally and politically, for which he could only feel indescribable shame and guilt. In this and other respects, Lawrence demonstrated reactions now known to be typical of male rape trauma syndrome. His boyish romantic idealism ("a man on his tip-toes trying very hard to fly") yielded to a fatalistic and even nihilistic realism ("men on their very flat feet stumbling over a ticky and noisome earth"). Unclean like the leper, he felt forgiveness was impossible, which made him foreswear decent living. Afraid of himself, of his obstinate will, he chose the path of degra­dation and the shackling of his soul, look­ing for security in submission. He went into the armed forces (1923-35) as a kind of mental suicide, in the hope of becoming an ordinary man. Colonel Lawrence enlisted as a private in the Royal Air Force as John Hume Ross and later as T. E. Shaw. But publicity followed him, which led to re­clusive intervals, transfers, and a two-year stay in the Tank Corps. Unfortunately he could not escape himself: he remained "a unicorn strayed amongst sheep." Aimless and failing to find rest, because he could not reach the ideal standard which was an absolute in his life, he was killed in a motorcycle accident just two months after he left the RAF.
Lawrence's life can be seen as a continuous battle between mind and body. Thanks to puritan upbringing by his dominating mother, sexuality became associated with guilt and sin, humiliation and pain, and with a loss of integrity. Everything bodily had to be suppressed, a belief that led him to asceticism. His ob­sessive self-control was shattered in pain and fear when he was tortured and raped by the Turks, and led to a loss of his "citadel of integrity" and his "crown of manhood." The desire he felt at that time was like an inner demon which had betrayed him, and this made penance necessary. Chastise­ment by young men was the humiliating punishment he inflicted on himself, but this was probably also the only way to release his sexuality without loss of integ­rity, because pain neutralized the enjoy­ment and purified the soul ("only our pain is never masquerade"). Distrust and fear of himself and others made real intimacy almost impossible.
Instead there were many male friendships. Men were less emotional and possessive than women, and therefore more trustworthy and facile as company, and also their bodies appealed more to his sense of beauty. He idealized Middle East­ern intimate friendships between men, which in his eyes showed perfect love because they were spiritual relations above all, even if sexuality entered: "friends quivering together in the yielding sand with intimate hot limbs in supreme em­brace, found there hidden in the darkness a sensual co-efficient of the mental pas­sion which was souls and spirit in one flaming effort." The only time he came close to a friendship like this was with Dahum ¡1896-1918), an Arab boy he met at Carchemish, with whom he had a very intimate, but probably nonsexual, rela­tionship for three years. But Dahum died of typhus at the end of the war, just before Lawrence had a chance to see him again, "and now not anywhere will I find rest and peace." After the rape at Dar'a it became even more difficult to open himself for another, and, like many others in the army, he spent life "in the enforced celibacy of their blanket's harsh embrace."
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Malcolm Brown, ed., T. E. Lawrence: The Selected Letters, New York: W. W. Norton, 1989; H. Montgomery Hyde, Solitary in the Ranks: Lawrence of Arabia as Airman and Private Soldier, New York: Atheneum, 1978; John E. Mack, A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence, London: Weidenfeld cX Nicolson, 1977; Jeffrey Meyers, T. E. Lawrence: A Bibhography, New York: Garland, 1974; idem, The Wounded Spirit: A Study of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, London: Martin Brian & O'Keeffe, 1973; Thomas J. O'Donnell, The Confessions of T. E. Lawrence: The Romantic Hero's Presentation of Self, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1979.
Maarten Schild

Leadbeater, Charles Webster (1854-1934)
English clergyman and occultist. Although in later life he liked to romanti­cize his early circumstances, Leadbeater was born to ordinary lower-middle-class parents in Stockport. Unable to attend university, he nonetheless obtained orders in the Church of England through a family connection. He then became curate of a village church, attending to the usual everyday round of parish duties. Chafing under the limitations of his appointment, he turned for stimulation to the High An­glican tradition (which appealed through its colorful liturgy and vestments) and to the then fashionable enthusiasm for spiri­tualism and the occult. He also showed an interest in several parish boys, instructing them in spiritualist practices.
In 1883 Leadbeater took the deci­sive step of joining the London lodge of the Theosophical Society, in whose ranks he rose rapidly. The following year Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who had founded the society in 1875, invited him to travel with her to India, necessitating his resignation from his parish post. During the voyage, the imperious Blavatsky found the shy ex-curate an apt pupil, and she awakened interests in him that were the foundation for his later claims of clairvoyance, spirit communication with the "Masters," knowledge of past lives of himself and others, and even the ability to see the inner structure of atoms.
For the following few years, he toiled at the hard work of gaining converts to Theosophy in Sri Lanka and south India. After Blavatsky's death in 1891, Leadbeater linked up with her heir, Annie Besant, one of the most powerful personalities of the later Victorian age, and the two formed a durable, though Platonic partnership. Besant's eloquence and resourcefulness were several times severely tested when she found herself called upon to extricate her associate from scrapes resulting from his adventures in teaching sexual magic to boy pupils. The most notable incident of this kind was Leadbeater's 1909 proclama­tion that an attractive Brahmin boy, Krishnamurti, was destined to become the fu­ture Maitreya (world savior). But the boy's father, who failed to appreciate this great honor, sued to get his son back and a major court battle followed.
In the meantime Leadbeater, always a prolific writer, had composed a series of popular books explaining the principles of Theosophy to lay people. Perhaps the most influential of these was Thought-Forms (1901; written in collabo­ration with Besant). This little book was illustrated with colored diagrams of auras and "thought-forms," many of which are in fact abstract paintings executed by as­sistants following Leadbeater's instruc­tions. The images had a catalytic effect on such artists as Vasily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian, so that Leadbeater may justly be regarded as the godfather of abstract art.
By the outbreak of World War I a senior Theosophist, but ever restless, Leadbeater spent most of his later life in Australia, where he turned first to Freema­sonry and then, surprisingly, back to Chris­tianity. In Sydney in 1916 he founded the Liberal Catholic Church, an institution that claimed apostolic succession through consecration from an associate who had in turn obtained his orders from an Old Catho­lic bishop. What engaged Leadbeater in this enterprise was not so much its theol­ogy, but the chance to work out elaborate rituals and to design rich vestments. Ever loyal, Besant gave her blessing, and Bishop Leadbeater now had a little religious king­dom all his own.
Claiming that his weak heart required constant monitoring, he insisted on having a boy with him at all times, even in the bath, so that a signal for help could be given. Increasingly reclusive in his later years, the Bishop gained a reputation among the residents of Sydney as the "swish bish." Although the Liberal Catholic Church subsequently acquired more conventional leadership and atmosphere, the original foundation has a claim to the honor of the first gay church.
Leadbeater's religious odyssey was marked by many unexpected twists and, some would say, a strong admixture of charlatanism. Unbeknownst to him­self, however, he constitutes a link in a chain that leads back to the tribalberdache and shaman figures, and forward to the involvement of gay men and lesbians in "new age" religion with its interest in channeling, new rituals, and discovery of special powers. More broadly, Leadbeater's popularization of such ideas as auras, vi­brations, and reincarnation played a sig­nificant role in the Aquarian revival of the occult that began in the 1960s.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Gregory Tillett, The Elder Brother: A Biography of Charles Webster Leadbeater, London: Routledge &. Kegan Paul, 1982.
Wayne R. Dynes

Lear, Edward (1812-1888)
English painter, humorist, and travel writer. A delicate child, Lear was raised by his older sisters who tended to inculcate in him feminine rather than masculine pursuits and hobbies. At the age of five or six he had his first attack of epilepsy - the "Demon" as he called it - an affliction which was then little under­stood and not yet controllable by drugs. This ever-present problem, which he never avowed even to his closest friends, caused him to be cautious and reclusive in his relations with others.
In his teens Lear found employ­ment as an ornithological illustrator; his achievements in this field are still admired today. In 1837, however, he went to live in Rome, where he supported himself by painting landscapes and giving drawing lessons to members of the English colony. In Rome he began a series of close friend­ships with fellow artists and visiting aris­tocrats. In 1846 Lear published his first Book of Nonsense, under the pseudonym of Derry Down Derry. In 1848 he began two decades of travel in Greece, Palestine, and Egypt, settling finally in San Remo, Italy (1870). He tried unsuccessfully to persuade a teenager, Hubert Congreve, to come and live with him in his villa in the Italian resort. In his last years Lear became almost a total recluse, his society consist­ing of his manservant and his beloved cat Foss.
Although Lear's paintings have recently gained renewed appreciation, it is for his nonsense limericks and songs that he is best remembered. Recoiling from the earnest atmosphere of evangelical Christi­anity in which he had been raised, Lear sought to puncture its pretensions with gentle spoofery. The nonsense also served to create a kind of Utopian retreat, which was important for a man who felt that he must conceal both his epilepsy and his homosexuality.
Lear never married - and his one effort to do so was managed in such a way as to guarantee failure. He cherished pas­sionate friendships with men, but his ardor was seldom returned with the intensity that he wished. Upon his death, one of his closest friends, his literary executor Frank­lin Lushington, destroyed many of his papers, apparently because they contained compromising material. Awkward, asth­matic, and retiring, Lear was aware of his social deficits. "Some think him ill-tem­pered and queer," he wrote of himself. Although he did not mean the last adjec­tive in its current sense, its full range probably applies to him. Out of the depths of his afflictions, however, Lear was able to generate the writings that have made him immortal.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Susan Chitty, That Singular Person Called Lear, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988; Vivien Noakes, Edward Lear, 1812-1888, London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1985.
Wayne R. Dynes

Lee, Vernon (1856-1935)
Pen name of Violet Paget, short story writer and essayist dealing with aesthetics, art history, and travel. Long neglected, her work is being revived in the 1980s, with reprints of her greatest short stories anticipated in the near future.
Lee was a child prodigy with a good background in European languages.
As a child in Italy she was a close friend of John Singer Sargent, and throughout her life she continued to have significant encounters with prominent figures of her day. Not a great success at keeping friends, Lee was shunned by members of the Brit­ish aesthetic movement after the publica­tion of her novel, the satirical and feminist Miss Biown (1884). Later she had a major falling out with Henry James, who felt he was satirized in her story "Lady Tal." Bernard Berenson discussed aesthetics with her in Florence, but this also led to a major misunderstanding. A friend and follower of Walter Pater, she wrote stories that combined decadent themes, aestheticism, and a concern for morality in a striking blend, enriched by an excellent sense of style. A pacifist during World War I, she took an unpopular stand that lost her read­ers in her last two decades.
Lee's voluminous papers have become available to scholars in recent years. One can now read her letters to her companion (1887-98), Kit Anstruther-Thomson. As Lee had not made her private lif e public, investigation of her papers may aid scholars trying to relate aesthetic for­malism, decadence, and homosexuality in the 1880-1914 period.
Lee's best work is found in her approximately two dozen short stories, some of which are collected in Hauntings (1890), Vanitas (1892), Pope Jacynth (1904), and For Maurice (1927). Her truly remark­able fantastic tales include "Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady," "The Virgin of the Seven Daggers," "Dionea," "Amour Dure," "A Wicked Voice," and "Oke of Okehurst."
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Vineta Colby, The Singular Anomaly, New York: New York University Press, 1970; Peter Gunn, Vernon Lee: Violet Paget, 1856-1935, London: Oxford University Press, 1964; Phyllis Mannocchi, "Vemon Lee and Kit Anstruther-Thomson: A Study of Love and Collaboration between Romantic Friends," Women's Studies 12 (1986), 129-48.
Peter G. Christensen

Left, Gay
It is widely believed that there is a special affinity between the political left and homosexuality, more particularly between the left and the organized gay movement. Gay leftists have promoted the notion that capitalism has been espe­cially homophobic, so that gay people as one of many oppressed strata of the popu­lation can only benefit from its overthrow. Yet this hope for improvement through revolution is belied by the status of homo­sexuals in Communist countries, which is generally worse than in the West; the gay communities there are denied the right to have organizations and periodicals of their own, even under the strict control of the Party. Moreover, homophobia is scarcely a special creation of capitalism but goes back to the first millennium b.c. - to the slave-holding societies of Near Eastern antiq­uity. And paradoxically enough, the mili­tant atheism and the blanket condemna­tion of feudalism in Communist ideology did not lead to what might appear a logical conclusion: that the sanctions against homosexual behavior are the anachronis­tic legacy of the role of the church as arbiter of morality under the Old Regime, and as such should be repudiated by the new. Be this as it may, in day-to-day expe­rience the gay/left affinity has been under­lined by the high visibility of left-based gays and lesbians in the movement - ac­tual numbers are fairly small - and by some undeniable theoretical contributions, especially from Marxism.
Main Trends. The roots of the modern left lie in the eighteenth century: in the anthropocentric materialism of En­lightenment thought and in the radical practice of the French Revolution. From the Enlightenment, the "party of human­ity," the left inherited a commitment to fight oppression and injustice wherever they may appear. Moreover, concern with human happiness must be universal rather than directed to one nation or segment of society. That these ideals have, as often as not, been honored more in the breach than in the observance, does not make them less worthy of respect. The Revolution that began in 1789 remains the archetype of the massive transformation that many leftists assume is the only remedy for society's ills. It was the French Revolution that abolished France's sodomy laws in 1791. Yet the full range of leftist thought does not emerge until the nineteenth century, when three strands may be dis­cerned.
The first strand is the Utopian, which looked to the creation of new communities in which social harmony and cooperation would replace competi­tion as the motor of human association. The Scottish philanthropist Robert Owen (1771-1858) attempted to set up model communities, but his principal legacy is the cooperative movement. The eccentric Charles Fourier (1772-1837), who also designed model communities, was one of the few thinkers of this formative period to emphasize sex. Indeed, his Utopian phalansteries were to provide for homosexual as well as heterosexual relations. The chief bequest of the Utopian trend to today's gay movement is the commune, though this also absorbed elements of the ecology and "New Age" spirituality movement.
The second strand is anarchism, which has several aspects. There was the individualist anarchism of Max Stirner (1805-1856), which was later promoted by the boy-love thinker John Henry Mackay (1864-1933). The Russian MikhailBakunin (1814-1876) advocated violent overthrow of the state, and became a principal com­petitor of Marx, while his fellow Russian Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) emphasized cooperation and mutual aid. Probably the chief legacy of anarchism to the modern gay movement lies in the gay participation in the libertarian movement.
The final strand is socialism proper, which may in turn be divided into Marxism and Social Democracy. Marx and Engels rarely gave much sustained thought to sexuality, a matter which they seem to have regarded as distinctly subordinate to the question of the relations of production, the economic base that for them repre­sents the grounding of all other sociocultural phenomena. Their occasional pro­nouncements on same-sex love are homo­phobic, and in any event only in the twen­tieth century did an organized sexual re­form movement emerge, some of whose theoreticians sought to create syntheses of Marxism and feminism, Marxism and gay liberation. The Social Democratic trend owes much to the English tradition of gradual and measured change. An out­standing figure in this tradition is Edward Carpenter (1844-1929), who created a kind of gay commune at his farm in Milthorpe. His writings drew upon a number of sources, including Walt Whitman and In­dian thought. They were widely read not only in the English-speaking world, but also in translation on the European conti­nent. In Germany SocialDemocracy gained a strong footing in the Reichstag (Parlia­ment), and its leaders, beginning with August Bebel (1840-1913), threw then-support behind the campaign for homo­sexual law reform. Although they were not successful at that time, it is significant that most of the reforms of the sodomy laws in Western Europe since 1930 have been achieved under Social Democratic regimes.
Toward the Present. The acute crisis signaled by the world depression of the 1930s caused many to seek solutions either in socialism or in Soviet-style communism. Because of pressing material problems, as well as actual persecution in the Nazi holocaust, the thirties were a period of occultation of the gay move­ment. When the American homosexual rights movement emerged in Southern California in 1950, a number of its found­ers had Communist party backgrounds. The rise of McCarthyism forced this trend > underground, and leftist affiliations in the gay movement were to surface later in a very different guise, under the aegis of the ' counterculture and the New Left. Some theorists saw the gay movement as form­ing part of a "rainbow alliance" of op­pressed groups, especially women and peoples of color. In leftist politics, how­ever, the gay movement did not receive a uniformly cordial welcome. The factions oriented toward Moscow, Peking, and Havana all rejected gay liberation just as the parties to which they looked for guid­ance had in their own countries main­tained or even intensified the traditional sanctions against homosexuality. In West­ern countries much leftist activity amounted to little more than "statementism," the issuing of ringing manifestoes and the passing of whole laundry lists of demands. When this rhetoric failed to lead to action, as was usually the case, adher­ents began to wonder whether those issu­ing the statements really wished to achieve meaningful change.
As hopes for revolution - or even radical incremental change - faded in the 1970s, most politically oriented gay men and lesbians sought to "work within the system." In the United States this meant participation not only in the Democratic party, with its traditional though some­times problematic policy of welcoming minorities, but also in the Republican party. The excitement of the New Left phase of gay politics had obscured a funda­mental fact: the political affiliations of gay men and lesbians, distributed as they are all across the socio-economic spectrum, generally mirror those of the society at large. Also, in practice the candidate who stands too far to the left - who embraces both economic and social radicalism - is likely to find himself cut off from any major constituency, while the centrist in economic matters can more easily em­brace such a cause as gay rights in sections of the country where much of the popula­tion is conservative in religion or simply clings to the traditional prejudices. The need of any aspiring movement in the United States to win over the center in order to gain majorities at the polls pre­cludes a political strategy grounded solely in the patronage of the left.
These problems were underscored by experiences in Britain in the 1980s, where sectors of the Labour Party were tarred in the media as the "loony left," in large measure because of their principled support for gay rights. Unfortunately this Labourite support has involved denuncia­tions of "heterosexism," and such critiques are easily misconstrued as put-downs of heterosexual persons. Not surprisingly, the situation has been opportunistically ex­ploited both by those against the left and those (some of them within the left itself) opposed to homosexual rights.
In all likelihood the best strategy for homosexuals and lesbians in any plu­ralistic society is to function as an interest group, contracting alliances according to a realistic assessment of advantages, and disclaiming any permanent attachment to any one political grouping.
'Wayne R. Dynes

Legal Procedure
Over the years lawyers in the American system of justice have come to recognize that it is best to observe certain procedures in serving gay and lesbian clients. At the outset of a prosecution for sodomy or some other homosexual of­fense, bailment or release on one's own recognizance should be sought to avoid persecution and rape in jail. If no dismissal is obtained, no demurrer filed, and no continuance requested, the defendant or his attorney must enter a plea at the ar­raignment. A plea of guilty ornólo conten­dere (no contest) ends the process that a plea of innocence would continue to a trial. Often the judge indicates his intended sentence and the prosecutor his recom­mendation before the plea so that the de­fendant and his counsel may determine the consequences of the plea. Also the sealing of the arrest records, changing an arrest to a detention, or the expungement of the judgment might be negotiated in advance. The attorney tries to shop for a favorable forum though continuances and waiving rights for a speedy trial, to pick a judge known for clemency, and to select by challenges a sympathetic jury. The defendant's excellent character, commu­nity contributions, and good prior record should be emphasized to combat homo­phobia, prejudice, and biases. To secure a plea bargain the defendant must waive, often in writing, his constitutional rights and protections, including a speedy public trial with counsel before a judge or jury, the right to remain silent without self-incrimination, to confront, cross-exam­ine, and subpoena witnesses, among oth­ers. Popular amended pleas bargained for include misdemeanors or mere infractions such as disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, and trespassing.
The differences in the maze of U.S. jurisdictions, municipal as well as state, render all precedents problematic and emphasize the need for experienced and erudite counsel. Often convictions under municipal ordinances do not appear on the criminal record of the defendant, such as a small fine satisfying a prosecutor of public nudity, remaining in a public place after closing time, and the like. Continuance for six months or some other period of time in contemplation of dis­missal in view of good conduct is more common in eastern than in western states. Some prosecutors allow "office hearings" instead of court appearances. Diversion from the courts to therapy or rehabilita­tion programs such as Alcoholics Anony­mous is often allowed. Prior convictions and probation violations, demonstrable only by a preponderance of evidence, ren­der alternative processes more difficult. Paroles stipulating that the defendant stay out of public restrooms or avoid social contact with homosexuals may, however, be overturned as too sweeping.
Reviewing the police report, inter­viewing witnesses, visiting the scene of the crime, assessing the facts about loca­tion and action to demonstrate the impos­sibility of particular allegations, and en­ticement and entrapment with the vice squad member's entreaties often result in a winning defense. For a gay client, how­ever, it is often difficult to prove lack of predisposition. A discovery motion or its alternative the subpoena duces tecum seeks to obtain evidence and knowledge in the possession of the prosecutor or his witnesses, such as previous abuse and brutality by the vice squad member or other evidence of his prejudice to discredit his testimony or to indicate discrimina­tory enforcement. Codes and freedom of information acts aid in gaining such de­fenses. Destruction of evidence may allow dismissal.
Change of venue, refusal of a certain prosecutorial office or a bill of particulars alleging the ambiguity of a statute, suppression of illegally obtained evidence, a forced confession, or improper identification in a lineup, double j eopardy, disqualification of a particular prosecutor or judge are among the many legitimate ploys. Current normal practices within the jurisdiction, old common law reme­dies, and creative arguments all justify such motions. Independent witnesses such as psychiatrists and sociologists, indepen­dent investigators, and visual aids help the court understand the homosexual's situation.
Waiving the right to trial by jury gives away the possibilities of a hung jury, the defense attorney's plea to the jury, and the judge's misinstructing the jury. In the voir dire process an attorney can not only challenge prospective jurors "for cause" but educate the ones selected about law and justice, and at times even suggest that favorable ones stick to their guns and not go along with majority pressure in the hope of getting a hung jury. Judges, how­ever, are at times less biased and more acute than juries, and waiving of them saves time and money. All these items must be considered in response. Motions in limine limit in advance the nature and extent of questions that may be put to certain witnesses, thus diminishing the need for objections, for example, about the sexual orientation or preference of the defendant, his prior offenses, and prior complaints about him.
Instruction to the jury should include reasonable doubt, presumption of innocence, burden of proof, specific in­tent, and credibility of witnesses. The judge's refusal to instruct properly per request of the defense constitutes an irre­versible error and hence allows an appeal. An effective summation in the closing argument weaving together the case by use of notes taken throughout the trial to prove the theory of the defense and rebut­ting the prosecution often wins acquittal.
After the trial many jurisdictions require the defense attorney to have the court correct any error in a pre-sentencing or pre-judgment motion, while failure to do so may result in the waiving of the alleged error and thus the loss of an oppor­tunity to appeal. Evidence in support of a plea for a mild sentence should be profferred. Probation officers, usually overworked, should be won over to recommend clem­ency, especially in view of the overcrowded jails and their negative effects on inmates. Alternate sentencing should be sought, such as work furloughs, weekend incar­ceration, and community service. Obliga­tion to register as a sex offender should be resisted.
See also Law, United States.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Roberta Achtenberg, ed., Sexual Ozientation and the Law, New York: Clark Boardman, 1985.
William A. Percy

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Italian painter, sculptor, architect, scientist, inventor, and thinker. One of a little band of truly universal men of the Renaissance, Leonardo's multiple creativ­ity, in all its vastness and intricacy, still offers a stunning challenge to modern interpreters.
Born in Vinci, the illegitimate son of a Florentine notary, Leonardo was taken away from his mother shortly after birth and given to his paternal grandparents to bring up. He was then apprenticed to the Florentine painter Andrea del Verrocchio, whom he seems to have quickly sur­passed - to the point that Verrocchio is said to have given up painting in disgust. In 1476, while he was still living at Verrocchio's house, he had an anonymous accusation of homosexuality lodged against him. He was said to have had, along with three others (one a Medici), active homo­sexual relations with a seventeen-year-old model. Eventually the prosecution was dropped, but not until after the accused had become frightened. This evidence shows that the young Leonardo was well acquainted with the flourishing "sodomite" subculture of quattrocento Florence.
In the 1470s his insatiable curios­ity led him to investigate the fundamen­tals of art, as seen in his studies of drapery and oil painting. Such early works as the Madonna in Munich and the portrait of Ginevra de' Benci in Washington astonished contemporaries with their naturalism.
The year 1493 found Leonardo in Milan, where he did a portrait of the mis­tress of duke Lodovico il Moro. He then did the two versions of Virgin of the Rocks, showing his remarkable mastery of detail. In the field of sculpture he made studies for a huge equestrian statue of the previous duke, Francesco Sforza, but the group was never executed. His major work in Milan is the celebrated Last Supper mural in Santa Maria delle Grazie, which sums up more than a century of efforts by Italian artists to come to terms with this complex problem in composition, psychology, and iconography. Unfortunately Leonardo executed the work in an experimental fresco technique and, despite the efforts of generations of restorers, today the mural is only a ruin, though an exceedingly eloquent one. His work in Milan inspired a host of imitators, including the gifted Sodoma.
After the French invasion of Mi­lan in 1499 Leonardo returned to Florence, where he found employment as a military engineer for Cesare Borgia. He also took great interest in dissection and anatomy, attending (among other things) to the mechanisms of coitus and reproduction. His major fresco project of this period, a state commission to commemorate a vic­tory which pitted him against the young Michelangelo, was never completed - again because he insisted on using an experimental medium that could not be continued beyond the central group (1503-05). He also grappled with the compositional problem of the Madonna and Child with Saint Anne, which re­sulted in several works, notably the car­toon in the National Gallery in London. One of his few finished works of this pe­riod is his portrait, known as the Mona Lisa, now in the Louvre in Paris, which owes its enduring fascination in large measure to Leonardo's mastery of the sfumato technique, permitting him to envelop sitter and background in an air of impenetrable mystery.
In 1507 Leonardo entered the service of the French king Louis XII - at first in Milan and in Rome, and then in France itself. He spent much of this last period of his life in scientific pursuits and architectural designs, liberally supported by the French court. He also revised and extended his voluminous writings - 8,000 manuscript pages have survived - includ­ing a treatise on painting, which was only published in 1651. His last work was the androgynous St. John now in the Louvre. Venerated by everyone who knew him, he died at Cloux near Amboise in a chateau bestowed by the king.
Over the centuries Leonardo's genius has attracted a variety of interpret­ers. In a controversial study of 1910 Sigmund Freud tried to throw light on the artist's homosexuality through a recollec­tion of childhood in which Leonardo imag­ined his mouth assaulted by the wings of the bird. Misled by an error of translation,
Freud believed the bird to have been a vulture, rather than the kite [nibbio] of Leonardo's description. This and other errors vitiate Freud's essay, and his failure has discouraged others from venturing much further. Although Leonardo was devoted to a scamp-like assistant, Salai, and later to a young aristocrat, Francesco Melzi, whom he adopted, not much is known about his emotional life. His prac­tice of making his notes in a mirror writing that casual snoopers could not read shows that his instinct for concealment was well developed. In an age in which artists - and many others - were relatively forthright about their sexual tastes, Leonardo felt an instinctive need to guard his privacy. Grounded in his illegitimacy, as it surely is, this reclusiveness has other wellsprings that cannot now be gauged. In this realm, as in others, Leonardo transcended his own age, producing endless food for thought and study on the part of each generation of scholars. In addition, Leonardo has cap­tured the attention and affection of the general public, which he is surely destined to keep through all subsequent shifts of the whirligig of fashion.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Serge Bramly, Leonard de Vinci, Paris: Editions Jean-Claude Lattes, 1988; Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo da Vinci: A Study in Chronology and Style, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.
Wayne R. Dynes

Lesbian Separatism
See Separatism, Lesbian.

Lesbianism
What is lesbianism: a predeter­mined state, a preference, affectional and/ or sexual in nature, a political choice? Moreover, is it an aberration, a playing out of male/female roles by men-hating women, an adolescent or immature phase?
Serious research in the field of lesbian behavior is relatively recent and remains uneven in coverage. Nonetheless, studies in the United States have yielded a relatively comprehensive description. For this reason, the present article limits itself to that country. Future research, it is hoped, will provide data affording a more global perspective on lesbianism.
Varying Definitions. At various points in the development of thought on this topic, experts, advocates and oppo­nents alike have used some of the above descriptions. For some, lesbianism remains a state of awareness of self experienced at an early age: one realizes a difference, an attraction to women. Proponents of this view say that they always knew that they were lesbians. For them, there was no choice: they were lesbians and they had to follow their inclination.
For others, lesbianism is a politi­cal choice, a conscious rejection of the patriarchy, of traditional roles for women, of limitations placed on women's con­trol of their own lives. It is a conscious embrace by women of women as their primary emotional, erotic, and spiritual attachments. For these lesbians, their involvement with women may have begun at a later age, stemming from a feminist consciousness, or it may have, in fact, started much earlier and been rein­forced through activity in the women's movement.
Regardless of the definition of "born lesbian" or "political lesbian," les­bianism has both emotional and sexual components. There are those who would attribute these characteristics according to gender roles within a lesbian couple. If the lesbian couple mimics heterosexual couples, the reasoning goes, one woman must be "fern" or more emotional/femi­nine in nature, and the other "butch" or more sexual/masculine in nature. Research has shown that less than twenty percent of lesbians engage in role playing of this kind.
Those who adhere to the belief that homosexuality is an "arrested stage of development" are greatly influenced by Freud and Victorian mores. Because of this background, homosexuality was classified as a mental illness until 1973, when psy­chiatrists and other mental health profes­sionals supported by the work of lesbian and gay activists fought to have homo­sexuality (as an illness) removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disoideis (DSM). Etiological stud­ies had shown that experts could not prove what made the homosexual different and that, therefore, he/she had no scientifi­cally diagnosable sickness or deviance.
Detractors will always find an authority to validate the claim that lesbi­anism is an aberration. Some religious leaders and biblical scholars have found "proof" for the condemnation of homo­sexuality. Just as many scholars have re­translated and reinterpreted the same quotations to show that it was the acts (hetero- and/or homosexual) of adultery, jealousy, inhospitality, and so forth, that were being condemned and not homo­sexuals. Likewise, sodomy remains a crime in many American states.
Lesbian History. Why has there been such a great effort to define lesbian­ism as a crime or a sickness? And why is there an effort to trivialize it as only a sexual liaison or, in fact, to blot out its mention totally? Given the paucity of material available on lesbianism, is lesbi­anism just a product of twentieth-century America, surfacing more rampantly since the 1960s and in certain bohemian urban centers?
There has been an almost total obliteration of the lesbian in history. Those who study Greek civilization and culture learn about Sappho and the women on the isle of Lesbos. Yet few strong women, independent of men, and attached to other women, stand out in our historical texts. When such a figure does appear, she is never identified as a lesbian. This "con­spiracy of silence" has kept role models and the potential threat to patriarchy under control. Only when intimate friendship between women was combined with women's growing financial independence toward the beginning of the twentieth century was this age-old bonding con­demned. What mention remains is that of a stereotypical, lonely, lewd, man-like woman who frequents seedy bars and seeks to seduce nubile girls.
The Kinsey Report on female sexuality (1953) helped somewhat to dis­pel this notion. No longer was the homo­sexual so foreign and remote from the heterosexual. The report found that the sexuality of those sampled lay on a contin­uum ranging from completely heterosex­ual through somewhat homosexual to completely homosexual. Accordingly, ten percent of the population could be as­sumed to be essentially homosexual, with a possibility of a considerably higher pro­portion of the population having engaged in homosexual behavior at one point or another.
Despite this beginning "normali­zation" of homosexuality, some lesbian theorists still referred to "pre-1950s" and "post-1950s" lesbians. Those of the earlier period are classified as less political, lack­ing role models, and committed to role playing. One dressed "butch" or "fern" and frequented bars which tolerated homosexuals. Socializing took place in private clubs or among friends, homosex­ual men and lesbian women. "Post-1950s" lesbians tended to be more open, politi­cized, and not involved in role playing. Moreover, as of 1969, a new legitimacy was being claimed by gay men and lesbi­ans. The contemporary struggle for gay rights was begun by gay men at the Stone­wall bar in New York. Furthermore, femi­nism supplied the philosophical base to lesbianism.
In light of this absence from his­tory, an effort is being made to write and preserve lesbian history. Lesbian history groups exist; individual lesbians record and exhibit/present their stores of infor­mation,- archives preserve books, articles and photographs. Lesbians are at work retracing their roots, finding in history a visible reference group.
Lesbian Identity. It is this group of strong, independent women which re­flects a positive identity for the lesbian and the world to see. Where stigma is removed from a minority group, the group becomes a viable functioning part of soci­ety. It also represents a real choice as opposed to the illusion of choice which many lesbian theorists claim is inherent in the "heterosexual preference." If there are no positive images of lesbianism, no role models, no mention of homosexual­ity, then "heterosexual" women do not have to ask themselves if they are lesbians. If there is nothing but a stigmatized stere­otype, then heterosexual women do not dare question a preference. This assump­tion of heterosexuality, unless one an­nounces one's lesbianism, is what theo­rists label "heterosexism." It reinforces the absence of lesbianism and eliminates the need for any choice while leaving the illusion of choice of sexual preference. In essence, heterosexism is the w ay a patriar­chal system has of preserving itself.
It is just this stigma and heter­osexism which make it difficult for lesbi­ans to know who they are, to come to a healthy sense of identity. This is what is known as coming out, reaching an aware­ness and an acceptance of self as a lesbian and, as a result, letting others know about this lesbian identity.
Coming out is a lengthy process involving one's inner and outer reality. Some lesbians are merely aware of a feel­ing of difference at an early age. Some know that it is an attraction to women. Either way, it entails a comparison of oneself to images of lesbians and to known lesbians, along with an attempt at putting together the way one sees oneself with these external images. Most often, the lesbian struggles against the stereotypical view of a lesbian. Frequently, she attempts to hide her feelings and inclinations be­cause she is "not like them." In order to accept oneself as normal, it is necessary to recognize oneself in other lesbians by get­ting to know the variety of types within the lesbian world. The lesbian may have already entered into sexual relations with another woman during this process, or she may have refrained from actual physical involvement until she felt more comfort­able. Total comfort with one's lesbian identity usually comes after involvement in one or more relationships. The ability to totally disclose one's lesbian identity generally signifies that one has fully ac­cepted this identity. Some would say that along with this acceptance comes a gener­alized sensitization to one's oppression and alienation at the hands of a patriarchal society.
How does the lesbian view her­self? Is she first and foremost a lesbian and then an amalgam of different personality traits that constitute her person? Does her difference he solely in her sexuality or in her spiritual bonding with other women?
It is often difficult for a lesbian to establish a healthy balance between her "lesbian identity" and her "personal iden­tity." As a member of a stigmatized minor­ity group, she needs the security of the community, the reference group, in order not to feel isolated. Yet, among lesbians there is a tendency to internalize stigma, the self-hate and the powerlessness inher­ent in minority groups and, then, seeing this stigma mirrored in her equals, a ten­dency to reject them.
The fear of rejection by the group is very strong and creates a conflict for a lesbian. If she is being accepted in the lesbian world exclusively because of her lesbian activity, must she, therefore, sub­ordinate her personal identity to this les­bian identity? Whereas, in the heterosex­ual world, she will be rejected exclusively because of her lesbian identity. The les­bian must, therefore, constantly assert her personal identity to avoid its being as­sumed into a group identity. Without this, individuality suffers, and one can become merged with the group.
While maintaining a healthy bal­ance of her personal and her lesbian iden­tity, and thereby, of autonomy and merger with the lesbian community, the lesbian struggles to integrate the various facets of her lesbianism. In her interaction with others, she draws together the affectional and sexual. Her difference from hetero­sexuals does not lie solely in her sexuality. Nor can one deny her sexuality and see only emotional bonding. Both perspectives have been promulgated by the heterosex­ual world to trivialize the way the lesbian relates as an integrated person to another woman.
Minorities Among Lesbians. The balance of personal and lesbian identity is all the more complicated for lesbians who are non-white, working class, aging, young, differently-abled ("handicapped"), or ru­ral. Here, the lesbian also belongs to an­other group where she may have the addi­tional conflict of whether to assert herself first as a black person, for example, and then as a lesbian. Many lesbians of color and Third World lesbians feel they must subordinate their lesbian identity to their racial/ethnic identity. Many non-white groups who view homosexuality as white society's disease see it as a form of geno­cide of their ethnic/racial group. In many of these groups, then, there exists a greater conservatism which would call for ostra­cizing the lesbian from the community. Therefore, the lesbian of color may deny her lesbianism to survive in her reference group.
On the other hand, racism reflec­tive of macrosociety pervades some les­bian communities. Here, the lesbian of color does not feel welcome. On the con­trary, she may feel forced to remain in her ethnic/racial community and deny her lesbianism. Some have sought to separate themselves into all black, all Asian, and similar lesbian groups. Among those who define themselves as progressives, many hold that the struggle for lesbian rights can only advance the struggle for the rights of blacks, Asians, Latinas, native Americans, and so forth, and vice versa.
The struggle for lesbian youth, aging lesbians, and differently-abled lesbi­ans is similar. These groups also face dis­crimination at the hands of the heterosex­ual world and the lesbian community. Aging lesbians may blend in among senior citizens or the differently-abled and then, not be seen as lesbians. Within the lesbian community, they may feel oppressed be­cause of their "difference." A lesbian sen­ior citizen, for example, can be denied access to nursing homes and retirement centers. If she is admitted, the administra­tion will not accept her lover. To avail herself of services for senior citizens, in essence, she will probably be forced to deny her lesbianism or her lover.
Within the lesbian community, aging lesbians are often stereotyped as grandmothers or mothers to younger, more attractive lesbians. Activists attack the existence within the lesbian community of ageist attitudes prevalent in the hetero­sexual world. Ageism perpetuates the patriarchal attitude that only the young, attractive female is of use to society. Aging lesbians fear being cut off and pushed aside as are aging heterosexual women.
Similarly, lesbian youth do not have access to the rights and privileges of older lesbians. More than this, though, they remain on the outside of their hetero­sexual peer group since very often the "gayness" stands out vividly when youth tends to exaggerate stereotypes. Deprived of role models, many lesbian youth copy the negative images seen in the media. They face ostracism, harassment, and violence because of their difference. On the other hand, older lesbians are often loath to offer support, friendship, and shelter to lesbian youth because of the legalities involved owing to their status as minors.
Lesbian youth face even greater risk if they have run away or have been thrown out by their families. This happens frequently to rural youth. Foster homes and shelters will usually not accept openly lesbian youth. If forced out onto the street, they often turn to prostitution to survive. Here, too, they are subject to violence.
Differently-abled lesbians must, likewise, deal with a double oppression.
They too may feel as if they must "choose their oppression." If they disclose their lesbianism within their differently-abled group, they risk being rejected because of their sexuality. Some able-bodied lesbians do not view differently-abled lesbians as sexual at all, thereby rejecting them. In other communities, an insufficient effort is made to accommodate the differently-abled at functions and centers.
Thus, for the lesbian who is not white, middle class, of average age, the oppression experienced as lesbian women in the heterosexual world is unfortunately also reflected in the lesbian community. When lesbians have been raised in an oppressive society and surrounded by stigma, there remains a residue of this stigma. One must constantly be aware of this internalized stigma and realize that the phenomena of oppression display similar patterns. In this, the lesbian community is beginning to make inroads in speaking out against all forms of oppression: racism, classism, ageism, and ableism.
Who, then, is this individual les­bian? She is a woman who identifies her­self with and as a woman for friendship, spirituality, erotic love. She is a member of a stigmatized minority with no officially accepted rights, no societal validation, no role models, no societally mirrored iden­tity - in brief, with no officially sanctioned existence.
She is a woman of strengths de­spite her deprivation. Independent by the very nature of her choice to identify with women, she has had to stand up for her rights as an activist, a leader, or as a survi­vor. Coping with stigma, she has devel­oped the skills to deal with prejudice and oppression and has learned to recognize social control in the multi-oppressive policies surrounding her.
Oppression. Yet what is the ac­tual manifestation of the stigma surround­ing the lesbian? Of what is she deprived, and how does it take its toll on her wellbeing? What is homophobia, and is it only heterosexuals who are homophobic?
Homophobia lies at the root of the harassment, the violence, and the exclusion from the "protection under the law" experienced by lesbians and gay men. It is an exaggerated fear of homosexuality in oneself and in others. Because of this fear of one's potential "conversion" to homosexuality, the heterosexual directs his/her hostility outward onto homosexu­als. It is a fear so abject that it would threaten one's belief in the family and in Western capitalism. As a result, atrocities, including murder, have been committed falsely using the name of god, law, and science as justification.
Yet, lesbian theorists have argued that homophobia is better examined as heterosexism. This is the assumption that every woman wants to be attached finan­cially and emotionally to a man. Accord­ingly, everyone and everything is hetero­sexual and heterosexuality is a preference. This silencing of lesbianism arises from the fear of woman-bonding and woman's spirituality which, because of their power, pose a threat to man's power. Hence, capi­talism must be protected by insuring patri­archal privilege through heterosexism.
The resulting oppression of lesbi­ans [and gay men) begins with their civil rights - rights generally guaranteed to all Americans by the Bill of Rights and reiter­ated more specifically by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet there is no federal guaran­tee of rights to homosexuals, and fewer than sixty municipalities have ordinances of protection. Even as "liberal" a state as New York has no "gay rights" bill. More­over, those gay rights bills which do exist merely prohibit discrimination in housing and employment on the basis of "sexual preference." Other gay rights bills have set up a body to investigate claims of discrimi­nation on the basis of "sexual preference" with no power to prosecute.
With so few structures in place to monitor or guarantee rights, instances of oppression run rampant. Lesbians are most at risk in the areas of work, custody, and health. Here, they experience discrimina­tion both as women and as lesbians.
Work. Work for the lesbian is vital for her survival. Depending on self as the sole means of support, she must exer­cise vigilance concerning her lesbianism. In a traditional domain of male privilege, sexist advances may be one thing. How­ever, a woman may be suspected of being a lesbian for as much, and supervised more stringently and found incompetent. Few companies or corporations have anti-dis­crimination policies, and if one does not work in a city with a gay rights bill, one has no recourse.
Work, however, plays a double role for a lesbian. The place of employ­ment is also a social arena where it is, perhaps, easier than in other social situ­ations to get to know other women. There is great risk involved here, since the lesbian may lose a potential friend, face harassment and ostracism once she discloses her lesbianism to her colleague. The friend may be heterosexual and fear that the lesbian is trying to seduce her. Then again, the friend may be a lesbian and both must seek a way of discovering the other's sexuality without alienation in case she is not a lesbian.
Certain types of employment are riskier than others. The military is a tradi­tional area where one can be dismissed for homosexuality. Regardless of the type of work, lesbians have been discriminated against widely. Studies indicate that be­tween twenty and twenty-four percent of the lesbians sampled have actually experi­enced discrimination on the job, and over sixty percent anticipate being fired, not employed, or passed over for promotion if their lesbianism is suspected. As a result, many lesbians experience higher levels of work-related stress. Working under condi­tions where one fears overzealous scru­tiny, suspicion, and ultimately, the loss of one's job, the lesbian may be forced to deny any hint of her lesbianism. Inner conflict and lowered self-esteem often result.
In conjunction with work, insur­ance is also an area of discrimination. No provision is made for a partner in a long-term relationship. Medical benefits, for example, cannot be extended to cover a lover or a child one is co-parenting. Some forward-looking corporations and unions are attempting to have insurance compa­nies extend coverage to "spouse equiva­lents."
Custody. Another area where lesbians face almost total discrimination is child custody. The lesbian is virtually placed on trial for being an unfit woman and for challenging her ex-husband's cus­todial rights. In custody law, judges are charged with examining the "best inter­ests of the child." What, in fact, is under scrutiny is the mother's lesbianism. Most custody cases have resulted in the denial of custody to lesbian mothers or severe limitations to visitation rights: the mother's lover may not be present, the child may not spend the night, and so forth. Despite expert witnesses, judges have consistently ruled in favor of the father or even for placement in institutions. The mother's lesbianism is seen as utterly detrimental to the child.
Expert witnesses attempt to demonstrate the emotional and psycho­logical well-being of the child. They focus their attention on the mothering received and the development of gender and sex roles. In studies, researchers have consis­tently found that there is no significant difference in the general emotional and psychological well-being of the children of lesbians as compared with those of hetero­sexual mothers. They urge the courts to look at the quality of the mothering in­volved, the relationship between mother and child, and the mother's ability to fos­ter growth in the child.
Concerning conflict over sexual identity, children of lesbians do not dem­onstrate sexual confusion. Researchers question how, if it were the mother's in­tention to "convert," "androgynous" fea­tures could be induced. These features include: self-assertiveness, independence, an ability to stand up for rights, leadership, and ambition. They agree that the acquisi­tion of sex and gender roles is influenced by the total environment, including tele­vision and peers, rather than solely by the mother.
Actually, the studies have shown that children of lesbians may, in fact, be more flexible, independent, and aware of greater options in life. Moreover, they may profit from greater nurturing and support if they grow up in a household where the mother's lesbian lover is present (as op­posed to a male lover).
Since custody struggles have re­sulted in so few victories for lesbians, most progressive lawyers urge the lesbian mother to try to settle out of court. If, however, this is not possible, she is en­couraged to retain a lawyer well-versed in this type of case. Decisions must be made concerning publicity and the presence of the mother's lover in the house. Questions of visibility are important since judges often rule on the basis of the lesbian's degree of notoriety.
Notoriety proves one of the stum­bling blocks in the struggle for rights of lesbian mothers. Many lesbian activists and legal groups hesitate to take on cus­tody causes because they might have to publicize the case in order to raise funds. Moreover, given the lack of precedence-setting in custody law and, therefore, the great degree of discretion with which judges rule, a success for an activist group is limited to that one case. A successful case may serve as a consciousness-raiser, but it will not influence future decisions.
Other legal struggles include custody of children by artificial insemina­tion, legal guardianship, and will. To date, in most cases where a lesbian lover has been named upon the death of her partner, inheritances, custody, and rights of guardi­anship have been challenged. Many gay and lesbian lawyers volunteer their time to instruct gay men and lesbians in the use of the law.
Health. Similar to the legal world, the world of medicine has been the do­main of men. Here, again, the lesbian must fight against discrimination to maintain her physical and emotional health. Many lesbians avoid using traditional physical and mental health facilities because of the inevitability of disclosing one's sexuality. Traditionally, lesbians have faced abuse at the hands of the mental health industry. Despite the removal of lesbianism as a disease from the standard manual in 1973, many mental health professionals con­tinue to treat lesbianism as pathological.
Likewise, many physicians have either made the assumption that the les­bian is heterosexual or offered poor service upon discovering she was not. Gynecolo­gists will often treat the lesbian as igno­rant because she is not using birth control or unhealthy because she is not having intercourse with a man. Service is geared to women heterosexually active.
Because of this ignorance on the part of the doctor, medical mishaps have been known to happen. In one instance, a lesbian, wheeled into an emergency room, was assumed to be suffering from an ec­topic pregnancy. If the treating physician had been aware of her lesbianism, he/she could have ruled out pregnancy and avoided a near-fatal delay in diagnosing a ruptured appendix. Similarly, less time would be spent examining for venereal disease (vir­tually non-existent in lesbians) and vagi­nal infections (less common).
Given the potentially hazardous situations resulting from the lack of a " sexual history," more appropriate service could be provided by the taking of just such a history. Lesbians, however, must feel comfortable and safe enough to give this history. In this, the choice of a physi­cian is of utmost importance.
Additionally, other documents are necessary to prevent undue stress during illness. These would include physician's rights of attorney and living wills. Because of discriminatory policies in hospitals and in the medical arena, in general, the lover of a lesbian is barred from taking an active role in her partner's recovery or death. Intensive care units limit visitation to immediate family members. The lover's only guarantee of being allowed to visit and to share in decision-making is through the above-mentioned documents. Here, with the knowledge of the physician, the lesbian gives the lover the power to make medical decisions for her should she be incapacitated.
Alcoholism. Inappropriate or inadequate service by the medical world is a general symptom of homophobia. Yet, one witnesses the full impact of oppres­sion and stigma when one examines the alcoholism and the need for psychother­apy among lesbians. The general silence surrounding these issues speaks more to a community's fear of further stigmatizing its members by admitting its vulnerabili­ties, than of denial.
Alcoholism stands out as a major health concern among lesbians. Statisti­cally, between thirty and thirty-five per­cent of the lesbian community is troubled by alcohol abuse. This is about three times the national average for heterosexuals. Part of this high incidence may stem from the centrality of the bar within the lesbian community. Meeting place and center of entertainment, the bar has also served as a political focus and a hub of activity within the community.
However, the prime factor in viewing the lesbian as vulnerable to alco­hol would seem to be her status as amember of a doubly stigmatized minority: she is a woman and a lesbian. Lowered self-es­teem, anxiety, paranoia, spiritual and social alienation often characterize the emotional make-up of members of a minority group. Moreover, the lesbian has had to cope with her family's and society's denial of lesbi­anism or their portrayal of lesbianism as deviant and sinful. She has had to pretend that her feelings for women did not exist, or adapt to the stereotype of the isolated, role-playing deviant who could only find acceptance in seedy bars. She has learned to pretend everything is all right, denying over a long period of time that she lives with stigma and alienation. Out of the resulting tendency to seek relief or instant gratification, the lesbian may come to trust in the security of the bottle.
Furthermore, the lesbian pos­sesses many of the characteristics of those at high risk for chemical dependency. Research shows these individuals to be deficient in one or more of the following, identification with a viable role model, identification with responsibility for fam­ily processes, low faith in miraculous solu­tions to problems, adequate inter- and intra-personal skills, skills to deal with systems, and judgment skills. Thus, lesbians seem at greater risk because they experience lack of coping skills and competence, since they are often isolated from family, insti­tutions, and people responsible for incul­cating those same coping skills.
Participation in the lesbian com­munity provides the means to bridge the isolation and the stigma. Responsible for the well-being of its members, the lesbian community offers alcohol-free spaces, alcohol education, and recreational oppor­tunities which do not require alcohol. Perhaps its greatest act of responsibility lies in the breaking through of its own denial (that alcoholism is a major health problem in the lesbian community ) to take an active role in combatting alcoholism.
More and more consciousness-raising groups and rap groups are address­ing the issue of alcoholism. Lesbian Alco­holics Anonymous and Adult Children of Alcoholics groups exist. Moreover, many lesbian (and gay) community centers have hired alcoholism counselors and have set up programs within the centers, while gay alcohol rehabilitation centers have already been established.
While the community can under­take some of the responsibility for service to its own members, society cannot be excused from its role. Programs sensitized to the needs of lesbians are still necessary. This need is especially felt in the area of psychotherapy. It is here that lesbians seek out insight into and healing for the stress related to living as a stigmatized minority in a hostile world.
Psychotherapy. Perhaps one of the most basic issues in psychotherapy for lesbians revolves around coming-out and self-image. Successful resolution reinforces a strong sense of self and a healthy iden­tity. Lack of resolution would entail a form of identity crisis: self-hatred, with­drawal and underachievement, depression, self-victimization, and/or suicidal ideas.
Treatment focuses on self-defini­tion. This process explores the feelings, images, needs, and roles involved in being a lesbian from the client's perspective. The therapist would also help the client mourn the loss of the former (non-lesbian) self, working through the denial of lesbi­anism and repression of feelings for women, and then, reconcile the negative stere­otype of lesbians with the image one has of self. Building of coping mechanisms and empowering the client to deal with minor­ity stress are also therapeutic interven­tions. The lesbian is particularly vulner­able in her self-esteem since she has been socialized as a woman, and therefore, tra­ditionally undervalued and disempowered.
In a similar vein, couples com­posed of two people socialized as women will also face characteristic problems. Trained to self-efface and to put a partner's needs before her own, a woman involved in a relationship with another woman can become enmeshed in a dance of mutual self-effacement or an inverted power struggle. A lack of self-definition and there­fore, an ignoring of one's own needs, leads to frustration, resentment, and anger, and often, hostility. The resulting power struggle can lead to a cycle of abuse where victim becomes victimizer.
Within lesbian couples, there may be a tendency to bond too closely or to "merge." Once again, this is a question of self-effacement or a lack of self-definition. Female children, nurtured by the mother, a same-sex parent, never have to separate from the same sex or turn away from the mother as do male children when they begin to side with the father. As a result, women tend to bond more closely on an emotional level, and two women together, then, can fall into a symbiotic relation­ship. Furthermore, society's lack of valida­tion of the lesbian couple also tends to force the couple to turn inward on itself and to close itself off.
This false sense of intimacy or merger will usually result in a reaction in the opposite direction or distancing. When couples merge, their sense of themselves as individuals is lost. Clothing may be shared, friends held in common, all activi­ties engaged in together. The end result can be stifling, and the only escape, a fight or a break-up.
Therapy with couples addresses the issue of self-definition again. This work enables one to self-assert, to work through conflict, and to step out of victim/abuse cycles. It also strengthens both individu­als who can come together as integrated, autonomous partners. They are now ca­pable of true intimacy since there is differ­ence between them, and sharing, not merger, is possible.
Families of Lesbians. Given the range of oppression and the resultant vul­nerability to alcoholism and to weakened coping skills, what has enabled lesbians to overcome stress and remain healthy? Are lesbians limited to marginal lives of social isolation and alienation? Is therapy the only answer?
Research has shown that lesbians are aging better than heterosexual women. If this is so, what are the factors involved? What societal features enable the lesbian not only to survive, but to prosper and to continue to come out and remain out in public?
While many lesbians have been rejected by their families of origin, others have disclosed to their families and found there a base of true support. Those lesbians whose families have accepted their lesbi­anism have this traditional resource as a grounding factor in their lives.
Coming out to one's family plays a major role in one's self-definition. Yet, the family, very often, goes through the same type of struggle as the lesbian her­self. Questions arise as to how the family now views itself and the "new" lesbian member; how to put together a stereotypi­cal image of a lesbian with the image of the family member; how to deal with the stigma this will bring to the family; how to fight the stigma, and in its place, project a love and pride in the lesbian family member.
The family mourns the "loss" of the "old" (non-lesbian) daughter and be­comes resocialized as a different family. Dreams of a marriage and grandchildren are lost, perhaps; fears of the daughter being oppressed are very real; religious conflicts arise. The struggle for the family parallels that of the lesbian, and for this reason, support groups exist for parents and families to deal with coming-out.
Just as the lesbian goes through a process of denial and slow acceptance, so too, the family experiences denial, guilt, isolation, and anger. Parents and family members may suffer a loss of self-esteem, depression, fears of not having modeled appropriate roles, of having "homosexual traits" themselves. The family may actu­ally bargain with the lesbian to remain silent about her lesbianism, so things will be all right. Eventually, its members begin to explore feelings related to the daughter's lesbianism and gain knowledge affirma­tive of lesbians so as to break the myths and to confront stereotypes. It is only after this mourning process that integration can occur as a life-long possibility of commu­nication which promotes self-actualiza­tion, as well as the means for the system to reconstruct itself and come to a full accep­tance of the lesbian member.
Thus, a lesbian who is assured of her family's love during this time of struggle can better cope with the general fear and guilt she experiences in disclosing to them. She is also empowered to confront stress in her environment.
Lesbian Couples. Another source of strength and validation for the lesbian is her primary relationship. Contrary to popular belief, lesbians do form commit­ted, long-term relationships. These couples are commonly characterized by stability, an absence of role playing, and satisfac­tion.
The values of relationships ex­pressed by lesbians resemble those of heterosexual women rather than those of either hetero- or homosexual men. They focus on equality of power, emotional expressiveness, and self-disclosure. Com­pared to heterosexual women, lesbians seem to favor more sexual openness and a greater similarity of beliefs between part­ners. Moreover, being less bound by tradi­tional roles, lesbians seem to profit from a greater range of choices and individual freedom in the lesbian couple and better coping skills from having overcome stigma.
Stigma, then, would seem to be the factor which most differentiates les­bian from heterosexual couples. No mark­ers, rites, or documents sanctify or protect the coming together of two lesbians. Families and friends often transgress boundaries by attempting to "fix up" one of the partners with a male date, or they fail to invite the partner to functions. It is no uncertain tribute to the resiliency and commitment of women to women that lesbians, pitted against this stigma, do succeed in maintaining relationships.
Parenting. As lesbian couples remain together longer, many consider becoming a family by adopting a child or by giving birth. Artificial insemination by donor has enabled many lesbian couples to form lesbian families and to co-parent. Some couples choose a gay male, others a relative of the partner to donate sperm. Along with this growing practice comes an emphasis on legalities concerning limita­tions of fathering rights and the inclusion of the rights of the lover of the biological mother in a nomination of guardianship. Cases already exist where, upon the death of the biological mother, her parents fought and won custody from the "psychologi­cal" parent (with whom the child natu­rally wanted to continue to live).
Lesbians are likewise adopting and fostering children. This is a more dif­ficult procedure. Given the stereotype of lesbians as child molesters and seductresses, great care must be given to the personal and psychological examination and inspection of the residence in which the child will live.
More common than "new" les­bian families, though, are those families of procreation issuing from the earlier mar­riage of the lesbian. While potentially at risk because of the lesbianism of the mother (and custody challenged by the father), these families can provide much stability and validation of the lesbian mother and her lover. In this family, too, all members pass through a coming-out process. Herein lies the deciding factor controlling the degree of acceptance by the children and the ability to continue as a family unit.
Coming out as a lesbian to one's children involves great risk. The younger the children are, the more easily they can accept that there is love between their mother and another woman. This is all the more true when the mother's partner is seen as nurturing and giving. Children usually respond appropriately when the information given is in accord with their age and ability to understand.
Teenagers present a more diffi­cult situation. Here, the fear of "contami­nation" enters into the picture. Adoles­cents, so engrossed in their own sexuality, may fear that the mother's lesbianism is genetic, or that they will be "turned into lesbians." The anger involved in their mother's stigmatizing them, by making them "different," sometimes creates great rifts in families.
The lesbian mother's task, then, is complex. She must convince her chil­dren of her continued love, of her contin­ued identity as "their" mother and not a "different" person, and of her ability to continue as a healthy model for them. This task is complicated by the mother's usual resulting guilt over her choice.
Because of this guilt and the fear of losing her children, the lesbian mother may deny herself access to a potential source of support: other lesbians, mothers and non-mothers, as well as other hetero­sexual mothers. To lesbians, she may appear to be a heterosexual woman; to heterosexual mothers, she may not be able to disclose her lesbianism.
Working through the guilt enables the mother to parent more effectively and to model emotional strength and stability for her children. Lesbian mothers who have dealt successfully with intolerance communicate their resiliency to their children and are more likely to foster tol­erance for difference of every kind and self-actualization in their own children, male or female.
Friends. In addition to biological families and partners, lesbians garner their support from their friends. In many cases, friends have become the "kinship net­work" for the lesbian whose family has rejected her. Friends often include past lovers; lovers are usually considered friends as well as sexual and romantic partners.
This network of friends provides an emotional and concrete support system which is held responsible for many "ad­vantages" that lesbians would appear to have over non-lesbian women in certain areas. It is said that lesbians age better than heterosexual women. This advantage over heterosexual women in the aging process is attributed to the fact that lesbians are less likely to be "left alone" by a partner's desertion or death. Since men are usually outlived by women, many wives find them­selves alone at an early age and somewhat isolated from a social network. This also holds true for newly separated and di­vorced women. Lesbians have never really distanced themselves from their women friends upon becoming involved in a couple. Therefore, they remain in touch with a range of friends, companions, and potential partners should a partner leave or die. Moreover, the lesbian community tends to represent women of all ages, thereby providing a circle of companions who are not likely to "disappear" or die within a short period of time of one an­other.
Community and Culture. It is just this circle of friends, acquaintances, and co-participants in lesbian activities who make up the lesbian community. "Community" bears with it not only the sense of solidarity as in "the women's community," but also conveys the image of all those establishments, institutions, activities, and media which provide an environment for lesbians.
This environment is both con­crete and abstract. On one hand, figure the lesbian (and gay) community centers, the therapy institutes, groups, bookshops, the bars, shops, hotels, coffee houses, and alcohol treatment centers. On the other, the term "lesbian culture" can be ab­stracted from the combined workings of all of these establishments and women.
Lesbian culture does not simu­late heterosexual or "straight" culture; nor does it merely complement straight culture. It has its origins in the homophile movement of the 1950s. Yet, it is distinct from the gay male culture. This discrete nature was expressed in the founding of the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955, the begin­ning of The Ladder in 1956, the first les­bian magazine, and the gradual politicization of the Daughters of Bilitis and of lesbianism in general during the 1960s and 1970s. Lesbian culture has as its core a philosophy of feminism and embraces therefore, an analysis of society, some­times radical, sometimes not.
From this political base, where one is reminded that one's personal under­takings are political, emanates a full range of cultural representations, the most widely publicized of which is lesbian writing. While there are publishing companies,
novels, essays, plays, poetry, magazines, journals, and newspapers which are known as "lesbian," for example, this label may imply that their value is marginal. On the contrary, lesbian women are producing work which is universal. The frame of reference, however, is lesbian.
Periodicals address a range of interests. Major cities and regions have lesbian magazines focusing on issues of concern to the lesbian community, as well as an analysis of broader issues. Calendars list local events and provide activities almost every day/night of the week (in larger cities and university towns). Maga­zines and journals feature areas of specific interest: for example, women's music, country lesbians.
In the world of art, lesbians are also represented. Collectives exist for the purpose of encouraging and supporting the work of lesbian photographers, filmmakers, and artists. Some remain grass roots opera­tions, while others have incorporated and are producing "commercially competitive" work.
Lesbian music or women's mu­sic, as it was once called, is perhaps the form wr ch succeeds in assembling the whole gamut of tastes, ages, styles, and politics among lesbians. Originally, one company, Olivia, a woman-owned com­pany, represented all the lesbian-identi­fied musicians. Now, many labels produce quality music of all styles. However, the pull of lesbian music goes beyond the record or tape to the lesbian concert.
Concerts have been a celebration for and of lesbians. There are several re­gional two-day festivals which bring to­gether lesbian musicians, comedians, theorists, healers, book dealers, and so forth in a ritual of lesbian culture. A type of "Woodstock" event, festivals give lesbi­ans "women-only" or "lesbian-only" space with camping, dancing, communal living for a weekend. Other concerts, such as that of Cris Williamson and Meg Christian in 1982 at Carnegie Hall in New York, helped to mark over ten years of women's music. Now, even "straight" clubs host lesbian musicians and draw large crowds, both straight and gay.
Conclusion. There is a lesbian button which was distributed in the 1970s. Its message reads: "We Are Everywhere." As the years pass, this may be even truer than before. Statisticians tell us that lesbi­ans represent at least ten percent of the female population, but intimate that the actual figure is closer to twenty percent. More and more gay rights bills and ordi­nances are being passed despite right-wing politics. Some legislators and other promi­nent figures are making known their lesbi­anism and standing up publicly to advo­cate for gay rights. Lesbian families are thriving, and parents of lesbians march alongside them in Gay Pride marches.
These are changing times. The description above no longer seems to por­tray a stigmatized minority. Rather, a group emerging from its political infancy and adolescence appears to be closer to taking its full space. Like other minorities, lesbi­ans have been fragmented and divided from one another or lumped together in a "seen one seen them all" type of focus. Their growing unity in diversity signifies a "no turning back" forward march.
This march of a diversified, strengthened people enhances the rich­ness of all cultures. Lesbian culture re­flects more and more diversity, and the manifestations of talent, skill, and excel­lence have grown proportionately. Just as ethnic lesbians bring back to their particu­lar racial or ethnic community a more varied perspective, lesbians add another facet to the pluralism which characterizes American society.
Lesbians may remain outside the mainstream of society, through the con­tinued oppression that is homophobia. Or, they may be gradually assumed into soci-; ety through a desensitization of the "les­bian issue" and a political liberalization. Whichever turn things take, whichever stance lesbian theorists put forth as more desirable to avoid cooptation, the presence of lesbians still delivers a clear message. The message remains: We Are Everywhere, and, as such, lesbians stand as a critique of society and provide an alternative to the traditional limiting role and identity ac­corded to women. Lesbians have self-de­fined: therein lies the power and promise of a discrete people.
See also Butch-Fern Rela­tionships; Friendship, Female Romantic; Separatism, Lesbian.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Boston Lesbian Psychologies Collective, Lesbian Psychologies: Explorations and Chal­lenges, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987; Virginia Brooks, Minority Stress and Lesbian Women, Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1981; Catalyst: A Socialist Journal of the Social Sciences 12 (1981), special issue on homosexuality; Margaret Cruikshank, ed., Lesbian Studies: Present and Future, Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1982; Trudy Darty and Sandee Potter, eds., Women-Identified Women, Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield Press, 1984; Josette Escamilla-Mondanaro, "Lesbians and Therapy," in Psychotherapy for Women: Treatment Toward Equality, Edna Rawlings and Diane Carter, eds., Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1977; Estelle B. Freedman, Barbara C. Gelpi, Susan L. Johnson, and Kathleen M. Weston, eds., The Lesbian Issue: Essays from Signs, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985; Journal of Homo­sexuality, 7 (Summer 1982), special issue on alcoholism; Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Values, Palo Alto, CA: Institute of Lesbian Studies, 1988, Dolores Maggiore, Lesbianism: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide to the Literature, 1976-1986, Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1988; Barbara Ponse, Identities in the Lesbian World: The Social Construction of Self, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978,-Resources for Feminist Research, 12 (March 1983), special issue on lesbian­ism; Barbara Sang, "Psychotherapy with Lesbians: Some Observations and Tentative Generalizations," in Psycho­therapy for Women: Treatment Toward Equality, Edna Rawlings and Diane Carter, eds., Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1977; Ginny Vida, ed., Our Right to Love, Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1978; Natalie J. Woodman and Harry R. Lenna, Counseling with Gay Men and Women: A Guide for Facilitating Positive Life-Styles, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1980.
Dolores f. Maggiore

Lewdness, Open or Public
This is the American legal desig­nation for a sexual touching in view of someone who might be offended thereby, in statutes often selectively enforced against homosexuals. It is often success­fully argued that a vice officer used to the sight of such behavior, in fact trained to seek out observation of it and inured to it by frequent experience, cannot conceiva­bly be shocked or offended by it. However, if he himself is touched, then battery, often a recommended conviction in plea bargaining, is committed. "Battery," non­consensual touching, often of a plain­clothes member of the vice squad, is a non-sexual misdemeanor not requiring registration with the authorities as a "sex offender," thereby having no auto­matic credentialing, licensing or employ­ment disabilities. It is not a sex crime or one of moral turpitude and does not con­stitute a felony on the second offense as does loitering.
Statutes often fail in their lan­guage to make clear that the conduct to be punished is public, not private, as appears to have been the intention of framers who entitled it "open lewdness." The omission of clear language limiting the scope to public conduct is disturbing and the word­ing of the statute should run as follows: A person commits a disorderly offense if, in a place exposed to public view, he commits any flagrantly lewd and offensive act which he knows is likely to be observed by members of the public who would be affronted or alarmed.
[Proper phraseology indicated by italics does not alter the meaning in any way.]
The whole history of statutes of this kind is against criminalizing lewd conduct when it occurs in private. The common law punished conduct such as indecent exposure, not because of its sex­ual character, but because it threatened a breach of the peace. This is reflected in many of the older penal laws such as the one in New York, replaced in 1965 by the present code. Section 722(8) of the old New York law punished such conduct only when it took place "with intent to provoke a breach of the peace, or whereby a breach of the peace may be occasioned." The same concept is involved in Section 2C:34-1, which penalizes the conduct only when other persons are affronted or alarmed. Where people are so offended, a clear risk of breach of the peace exists. This fortifies the conclusion that the draft­ers of such provisions had in mind only conduct exposed to public view, since by definition, a breach of the peace is some­thing that affects the public. To punish conduct which is not exposed to public view, such as that occurring within the home or family, even if it be there observed by others, would extend the criminal law into areas where it has not generally in­truded and would contradict the entire thrust of modern statutes that protect sexual privacy.
Open or public lewdness became a common law offense not because it was immoral but because it constituted a threat to public order. The common law did not punish lewd or lascivious behavior in pri­vate,- fornication, unlike adultery, was no crime. But adultery, originally cognizable in ecclesiastical rather than royal courts, was punished as a criminal offense whether it took place in public or in private.
It can be argued that forms of "engaging" constitute "lewd, lascivious, or dissolute conduct." The law is also vague as to the meaning of "public place," a "place open to the public" and "exposed to public view." The analogies to solicita­tion are obvious, and in jurisdictions where sodomy is decriminalized, should the kiss­ing or hugging of same-sex partners in public be defined as less legal or more lewd than similar activities by heterosexual couples? "Indecent exposure" would pro­scribe conduct so gross as to deserve crimi­nalization. This refers to intentional, sexu­ally motivated attracting of attention to one's exposed genitalia. Unlike solicita­tion, it is often offensive to the general public and reported by it to the authorities. In some jurisdictions it may be a felony on second or subsequent convictions. It often overlaps in certain respects with the non-provable misdemeanor "public lewdness." In fact, the modern penal codes of some jurisdictions combine the crimes of inde­cent exposure and public lewdness into a single statute. Though elimination of "public lewdness" would make it more difficult for police to build up their arrest records easily, it would lessen the burden of the courts and hardly cause more em­barrassment or offense to the vast majority of the public.
See also Law, United States. William A. Percy and Arthur C. Warner

Lezama Lima, José (1910-1976)
Cuban novelist and poet. The son of an artillery officer, Lezama Lima was impressed by military parades and gala events, images which often recur in his work. He suffered, like Marcel Proust, from asthma attacks that caused him to be separated from playmates. After his father died when he was nine, Lezama Lima lived with his mother, his two sisters, and his grandmother. His studies were brought to an end in 1930 when the Machado govern­ment closed the University of Havana. In 1936, however, he met the Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, who encouraged him to embark on a literary career. Alongside his own poetic production, he edited the journals Verbum (1937), La Espuela de plata (1939-41), Nadie parecía (1942-44), and Origines (1945-56). For these periodi­cals he translated the work of many French-and English-speaking writers, including Proust and Camus, Yeats and T. S. Eliot.
In 1944 Lezama Lima began his masterwork, the novel Paradiso, which was not to be published until 1966. In its reminiscences from his childhood, marked by illness and attachment to his mother, the novel recalls Proust's A la Recherche du temps perdu. The descriptions of the narrator's homosexuality surpass, how­ever, this model in frankness. Other com­parisons - to Dante's Divine Comedy, ThomasMann'sMagicMountain, and even Joyce's Finnegans Wake - reveal the monumental status of the work. Upon its Havana publication, even in a defective first edition, the novel immediately as­sumed its place at the forefront of the "boom" of Latin American prose. Its lin­guistic innovations and breadth of con­sciousness were hailed by such peers as Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Juan Coytisolo. Although the book has been translated into the major European languages, its difficult prose style and anchoring in the Latin American scene have thus far denied the author the world recognition that he deserves. Lezama Lima intended to publish two sequels, but completed only one fragment, Oppiano Licario.
After the death of his mother in 1964, he lived in seclusion. Although he was never officially denounced by Castro's government, his homosexuality and his Catholicism were known to be the subject of disapproval in the bureaucracy. His work has remained an example of artistic integ­rity and refusal to bow to political pres­sures.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Mechtild Straussfeld, ed., Aspekte von fosé Lezama Lima "Paradiso," Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979.
Wayne R. Dynes

LIBERACE, WLADZIU Valentino (1919-1987)
American popular entertainer. Liberace first attained local success by performing schmaltzy, abbreviated ver­sions of piano classics at restaurants in his native state of Wisconsin. After appear­ances in the vaudeville circuit, he found a perfect match with American television as it emerged as the dominant mass me­dium in the 1950s. His flamboyant cos­tumes and props helped to generate the adulation that made him one of the high­est paid entertainers of all time. Many of his most faithful fans were older women, who apparently accepted at face value his public protestations that he was not homosexual.
In his West Milwaukee high school he already showed a fondness for drag, but apparently remained uninter­ested in sex until the 1940s, when he began to explore his taste for men. In 1956 Cas­sandra, an acidulous columnist for the London Daily Mirror, reviewed a Liberace concert, calling him "the summit of sex - the pinnacle of masculine, feminine and neuter. Everything that he, she, and it can ever want." Then the American gossip tabloid Confidential joined in with a cover story entitled "Why Liberace's Theme Song Should Be 'Mad About the Boy.'" Un­abashed, Liberace sued both publications, and won.
Rumors continued to circulate. Although he claimed to be devoted only to his pet dogs, Liberace's mansions were home to a succession of handsome young men. In 1982 an ex-lover brought a palimony suit. Although Liberace was diag­nosed with AIDS five months before he died, the fact was continually denied. Only a mandatory coroner's autopsy revealed the truth. Liberace's image as an enter­tainer had been a highly artificial creation, and so it remained until the end.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Bob Thomas, Liberace, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988; Scott Thorson, Behind the Candelabra: My Life with Liberace, New York: Dutton, 1988.

Liberalism
Liberalism is generally regarded as a distinctively modern political credo. As such it has implications for sexual liberty, hut these must be understood against a broader background of political controversy.
Formative Influences. Liberalism arose in a civilization profoundly shaped by Greek philosophy, by Roman law, and by Protestant religion affirming the close­ness of man's relationship with God. Nonetheless, the liberal idea of freedom was a novelty in the formative period of modem European civilization; it arrived only with the ascription of rights to the individual against those in authority over him, or against the collective embodied in tribal custom or in the state power. The rights posited by liberalism are signifi­cant, universal, and allotted to every human being endowed with the minimum of competence to govern his own affairs.
Liberalism undertook to restrict or even abrogate the power of the state and the church in favor of the individual, who was invested with a sovereignty in his own right, as the one best capable of judging his own needs and interests. In the Western European countries of Latin Christianity it was the church rather than the state that bore the responsibility for defending as well as teaching the true faith, and the temporal power was but the auxiliary summoned to smite those whom the church had condemned as heretics and reprobates. Hence the West - as compared, say, with Byzantium, Islam, or China - could more easily accept the notion that matters of faith and conscience He beyond the jurisdiction of the state, that the spiri­tual and temporal powers must never be joined in one, and that the state should have the minimal function of preventing harmful and antisocial behavior, rather than serving as the primary upholder of religious and ethical truths.
The Role of Major Thinkers. The doctrine of the social contract, fashionable among political theorists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was first used to support the claims of religious minori­ties, and of churches and sects anxious to assert their independence of the civil power. This doctrine postulates an individual whose rights and wants precede the estab­lishment of a government whose assigned task is to protect the rights and supply the wants. John Locke (1632-1704), in his Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690), argued that government exists to protect the life, liberty, and property of its subjects, who are obliged to obey it only so long as it protects them adequately and does not abuse its powers. Eventually, the defense of property was extended to one's own body, providing a powerful argument for sexual liberty. Political power, Locke maintained, is legitimate only when those holding it exercise it with the consent of the governed, who may take steps to pre­vent abuses of power. In France Mon­tesquieu (1687-1755) further argued that it is expedient to separate the judicial from the executive and legislative powers, and in the twelfth book of The Spirit of the Laws (1748), he discussed principles and practices to ensure that no one be pun­ished except for breaking the law, that accused persons receive a fair trial, and that citizens can exercise their rights ef­fectively against both public officials and other citizens.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797), though an unrelenting champion of de­mocracy, was concerned with another aspect of freedom that liberalism has seen fit to defend: the need to protect the rights of the individual from radical demagogues and popular dictators who seek to crush everyone who opposes the "will of the masses." The sovereignty of the people had to be dammed up by constitutional forms and legal procedures that would thwart unjust and oppressive measures, no matter how strongly they were desired by the majority. This doctrine, sometimes termed counter-majoritarianism, was later to prove important for the defense of unpopular minorities, including homo­sexuals. In essence, classical liberalism saw the rights of the individual as standing in opposition to the claims of the state, whether the latter derived its power from divine sanction or from the will of the electorate.
The modern idea of freedom has also had to confront the problem of the relation between man and society. In his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality among Men (1754), Jean-Jacques Rousseau ¡1712-1778) argued that man acquires distinctively human skills and needs only by leaving the state of nature, and that these social needs can be satisfied only by civil institutions such as government. Rousseau also introduced the notion that insofar as man is "corrupted" by society he can be motivated to act in a manner harm­ful to himself and to others. He can acquire wants and ambitions that are insatiable, inconsistent with one another or with his future well-being, or such that the means to satisfy them will always be lacking.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) made a sharper distinction than did Rousseau between morality and legality. The task of the state is to make and enforce laws in the common interest; the freedom that lies in obedience to self-imposed laws belongs to a sphere with which the state is not di­rectly concerned. This principle was later to be invoked as an argument that there is a sphere of moral choice which should be left to private conscience and not to the intervention of the state with its police power.
One nineteenth-century thinker stands out, the English utilitarian John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). In his widely read paper, "On Liberty" (1869), Mill held that no one has the right to interfere with the freedom of action of another competent adult, unless the action causes harm. Moreover, Mill linked this principle of liberty of action with liberty of expression. One should hesitate to repress opinions because it is very difficult to tell which opinions are false, and even if this could be determined, silencing them will cause more harm than good.
In 1911 L. T. Hobhouse (1864-1929) created a new model of welfare liber­alism, incorporating some elements from Fabian socialism and advocating vigorous government intervention. Although this version of liberalism is the most familiar form today, it is of less significance for homosexuals than classical liberalism, since the economic and social issues ad­dressed by the welfare state are not perti­nent to gay people as such.
Apphcations. Homosexual advo­cates, from the 1860s to the present day, have appealed to one strand or another of the classical liberal tradition in their effort to sway public opinion. The basic argu­ment has been that the individual should have the same right to seek happiness in the sexual sphere as in any other, that the state should no more intervene in the bedroom than it does in the marketplace. Crucial to the logic of this position is the assertion that true homosexuality is in­born, or at least environment-stable, and not modifiable by conditioning or experi­ence. The inference is that homosexual men and women should have the same right to sexual expression as their hetero­sexual counterparts, and that it is unjust to penalize any segment of the population for engaging in conduct which it finds pleas­urable and which causes no harm to oth­ers. The opposition has often countered with a version of Rousseau's belief that the child and adolescent are exposed to a cor­rupting environment which can cause them to be fixated in a homosexual orien­tation.
The separation of church and state - which, it should be emphasized, has not been achieved in many countries where liberalism triumphed in the politi­cal and economic spheres - has been a cornerstone of the arguments for homo­sexual emancipation in the United States. It might be thought that the formal separa­tion of the spiritual and temporal powers realized by the First Amendment to the American Constitution would have ended all laws whose object is to impose the ascetic morality of the Christian church upon the citizenry by penal sanctions. That this did not occur at the end of the eighteenth century and in many jurisdic­tions has not occurred until now must be regarded as the greatest single failure of liberalism in the English-speaking world. While other areas of criminal law and procedure underwent drastic changes as a consequence of liberal criticism of the practices of the Old Regime, by standing still the penalties for consensual homo­sexual behavior between adults became relatively even more severe: in not a few states, as late as the 1960s, they were three or four times the maximum that could be imposed for armed robbery, theft of funds from a charitable institution, or beating or neglecting a small child.
A conservative argument for re­taining the penal sanctions is that they are actively desired and approved by a major­ity of the electorate. To this the liberal reply is that the individual - including the homosexual individual - should be pro­tected in his personal rights and freedoms against an intolerant majority, in this case a majority incited by fundamentalist and tradition-minded religious bodies who openly appeal to their members to oppose legislation on behalf of homosexuals. However, referenda sponsored by right-wing churches have in numerous cities succeeded in repealing gay rights bills enacted by a majority of the city council; and the very same courts that have ruled in favor of other minority groups have balked at extending the protection of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the gay mi­nority.
Classical liberalism addressed itself mainly to political and economic issues, leaving the topic of sexual morality and the legitimacy of sexual acts strictly alone. It was too preoccupied with reform of the commonwealth, with the winning of political rights and economic freedoms for the individual, to be concerned with so sensitive an area of private life as the sexual. Its sole accomplishments in this sphere were an exceedingly gradual relaxa­tion of the laws on divorce that expanded the admissible grounds for terminating a marriage, and a similar attenuation of the statutes against birth control and pornog­raphy. Also, liberal reforms required an organized interest group, a constituency that could bring pressure to bear on the executive and legislative branches of gov­ernment - and because of the social stigma attaching to homosexuality no such for­mal organization was possible until quite recently. On the other hand, the exceed­ingly authoritarian personality types who detest homosexuals are often self-excluded from the political arena because they cannot follow the grammar of politics which liberalism has formulated, includ­ing the need to unite around a single issue with allies who hold divergent views on other issues.
Liberalism never extended the notion that enlightened self-interest is a legitimate motivating principle for human actions to the realm of sexual pleasure, except in the work of a handful of thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham who were well in advance of their time. Many of the revered authors of the liberal school, when they discussed sexual matters at all, felt obliged to treat traditional views as beyond criti­cism. Furthermore, although prior censor­ship of printed matter had been abo­lished in England in 1694, through the offense of blasphemy which was retain­ed the notion of obscenity crept into the common law, with the definition that a book was obscene if it tended to corrupt anyone "into whose hands it might fall." In practice this ruling meant that it was impossible even to publish works that sought to enlighten the public on the subject of homosexuality.
The consequence of this liberal failure of nerve was that postmedieval attitudes toward homosexual individuals and homosexual behavior persisted well into the middle of the twentieth century, even in countries where almost every other vestige of the inequality and intolerance of the Old Regime had been relegated to the "dustbin of history." It was only in 1954, 57 years after Magnus Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, 90 years after Karl Heinrich Ulrichs began his lonely campaign for homosexual eman­cipation, 190 years after Cesare Beccaria published his treatise On Crimes and Pun­ishments, that the Moral Welfare Council of the Church of England finally "took the initiative" to call for reform of the archaic laws.
The Report of the Wolfenden Committee that was published three years later utilized many of the arguments of classical liberalism to justify its decision to recommend law reform, yet one critic of the document noted that it seemed to stand outside time - that far from being novel, it appealed to notions which victo­rious liberalism had by then made com­monplace and self-evident in all other spheres of life.
Relevance. Since the struggle for homosexual liberation is far from ended, it is well to consider how the fundamental notions of the liberal creed apply to the issue. Liberalism denied the role of the state as a coercive guardian of the morals of the citizen; instead it defended his right to autonomy and to freedom in his private life. It demanded the separation of the state from the church, and an end to the use of the police power of the state to enforce religious teaching. It held the rights of the individual sacrosanct against the tyranny of the majority as much as against the arbitrary whim of a crowned sover­eign. The laws and customs that stand in the way of homosexual liberation are an anachronistic legacy of the Europe of abso­lutist monarchies that the liberal credo was to transform into a set of constitu­tional states with laws and institutions meant to safeguard the freedom and dig­nity of the individual. Despite its short­comings, the liberal tradition is an indis­pensable resource for the gay rights movement of today.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. John Gray, Liberalism, Milton Keynes, England: Open Univer­sity Press, 1986; Richard D. Mohr, Gays/ Justice: A Study of Ethics, Society, and Law, New York: Columbia University Press, 1988; Ronald D. Rotunda, The Politics of Language: Liberalism as Word and Symbol, Iowa City: Iowa University Press, 1986.
Warren Johansson

Liberation, Gay
In 1969, almost immediately af­ter the Stonewall Rebellion, the Gay Lib­eration Front (GLF) sprang up in New York City. The choice of name reflects the fame of several movements to overthrow for­eign domination that had arisen after World War II in Europe's remaining colonies, especially in Vietnam and Algeria where the insurgent forces both adopted the name National Liberation Front. Such models became attractive in North America be­cause of the widespread opposition to the Vietnam war, and the analogy that was at that time discerned between the colonized in the Third World, on the one hand, and blacks and other ethnic minorities in North America (e.g., the Québécois), on the other.
A major source of ideas and inspi­ration for gay liberation has been the women's movement. Betty Friedan recalls first hearing "women's liberation" in 1967, two years before the Stonewall Rebellion. The expression apparently originated among women of SNCC, a civil rights group, and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), who had grown tired of being assigned the demeaning roles of coffee makers and secretaries in their own or­ganizations. Thus women's liberation meant not only freedom from the oppres­sion of society in general, but also from the sexism rampant in movements for social change as they were then constituted.
All the same, the Gay Liberation Front in New York City and its namesakes elsewhere were inspired by the New Left analysis which viewed the plight of the minorities as the result of deep, systemic flaws in society. In the turbulent days of the early seventies the GLFs faded, in part because of their lack of strong organiza­tional structure, which made them vul­nerable to factional strife, internal oppor­tunism from inadequately screened reemits from the "street people," and FBI infiltration. Also, with the end of the Vietnam war in January 1973 the wave of radicalism that had swept over North America came to an end, and the multi-issue organizations of the late 1960s could no longer rally large followings. These volatile groupings yielded to more struc­tured and "respectable" single-issue bod­ies, such as the Gay Activists Alliance and the National Gay Task Force, which sought to advance the cause of gay rights within the existing political and economic frame­work of American society. In Britain and Europe the greater strength of older radical traditions made the multi-issue model - in alliance with the left, even the extreme left - more long-lived, but eventually it faded everywhere.
What remained was the idea of liberation, the definition of which varied of course from one tendency to another. An early statement of the liberationist's aims was Carl Wittman's "A Gay Mani­festo" of 1969, which lashed out against the mimicry of "straight" society, oppres­sion, self-oppression, and role dichotomies, while favoring gay ghettoes (if reorganized as "liberated zones"), together with coali­tions with women, blacks, Hispanics, and radicals. Wittman had been active in the paramount New Left organization, SDS, and he later acknowledged that the oppres­sion he felt as a gay person in that group both hindered and shaped the emergence of his consciousness.
Thoroughgoing true believers invidiously contrasted gay liberation with gay emancipation, which was stigmatized as a collage of mere cosmetic, reformist pseudosolutions designed to "mystify" and obstruct the revolutionary project. Oth­ers, with less flaming rhetoric, viewed that matter as a two-stage process. In the first stage there is a primarily legal and legisla­tive struggle to secure basic gay rights. This phase then gives way to the more creative and difficult construction of gay liberation as part of a program of universal human liberation. Such utopianism, though probably not destined to disappear altogether, became less salient in the 1980s.
The sexual liberation movement inspired many GLF groups. The New York GLF paper Come Out carried pictures of the staff in the nude as did Rosa von Praunheim's German film It Is Not the Homosexual Who is Perverse But the Society in Which He Lives (1971). Boston's Fag Rag and San Francisco's Gay Sun­shine, together with Washington's Furies and Boston's Amazon Quarterly, explored themes of phallic imperialism and new forms of sexual liberation. Herbert Marcuse's widely read Eros and Civiliza­tion, Wilhelm Reich's works, and Shulamith Firestone's Dialectics of Sex all provided early clues to a new direction. Consciousness-raising groups based on the Chinese cultural revolution spread to the women's movement and then to gay lib­eration. In the 1980s they were largely replaced by psychotherapists who favored accommodation more than fundamental social change.
Although many adherents of the "revolutionary" program of gay liberation would be loath to admit it, there probably lingers in the background of their program the kernel of a Judeo-Christian theological notion, that of dehverance, in the sense of a rebirth or total transformation of the spirit. The Exodus experience - simulta­neously an escape from bondage and a summons to build a new life for the com­munity in the Promised Land - is the most important single precedent. Another sig­nificant religious tradition is medieval millenarianism, which yoked demands for radical social change ("the last shall be first") to expectations of apocalyptic up­heavals. These ideas fed into nonconform­ist Christian traditions of various stripes. Protestant churches have preserved memo­ries of separation from ties to a Roman Catholicism accused of having lost the ideal of primitive Christianity, in order to build a new Jerusalem. In the 1980s a group of Radical Faeries purchased land in Wolf Creek, Oregon, where they seek to build both a refuge and a new kingdom.
These traditions, and others not cited that may also be relevant, share universal themes: the slave losing his shackles; release from prison; and escape from the arbitrary power of a despot. Yet as gay men and lesbians more and more take their place in the mainstream, these im­ages of radical change seem less persua­sive. By the 1980s - when the insurrec­tionary turbulence of gay radicalism was only a memory - while the expression "gay liberation" was still heard, it had lost the almost messianic fervor with which it was once invested, to become part of the every­day language of political entitlement. The mandate of separatist charisma had yielded to the more immediate rewards of main-streaming.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Dennis Altman, Homosexual: Oppression and Libera­tion, New York: Outerbridge and Dienstfrey, 1971; Joseph A. McCaffrey, ed., The Homosexual Dialectic, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972 (contains Wittman's "A Gay Manifesto," pp. 157-71); Toby Marotta, The Politics of Homosexuahty, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981; Mario Mieli, Homosexuahty and Liberation, London: Gay Men's Press, 1980.
Wayne R. Dynes

Libertarian Perspectives
In the strict sense libertarianism is a political trend that emerged in the United States in the 1960s. Its ideas stem not only from the anarchist tendency that views the state as the enemy, but also from Anglo-American traditions of individual liberty, private property, and classical lib­eralism. Libertarians see the expansion of state power as the principal source of the ills of modern society, as it tends to restrict the rights of the individual, choke eco­nomic development, and foster interna­tional intervention and conflict. Libertari­ans can claim to combine features from both the radical and conservative tradi­tions, and they have attracted followers from both groups. In an era of computeri­zation and nuclear weapons, their ideas are often dismissed as anachronistic. If the goal is abolition of the state or even reduc­tion of its role to that of a "night watch­man" offering only the most limited serv­ices (the minimal state), libertarian ideals may seem chimerical. Yet as the histories of the abolitionist and prohibition move­ments show, the function of such projects is not to supplant existing political parties, but to place issues on the agenda. Feasibil­ity studies of individual sectors of the economy, such as garbage collecting and fire protection, suggest that these tasks can be performed more efficiently by pri­vate industry. As the appeal of state social­ism has faded throughout the world, such diverse countries as France, Mexico, and Singapore have embarked on privatization campaigns. Libertarians have also been strongly in favor of deregulation in indus­tries that already are private.
The defense of individual rights - which is, of course, not conducted exclu­sively by libertarians - has appealed strongly to mainstream gay men and lesbi­ans. To be sure, the libertarian insistence on preserving the realm of personal pri­vacy goes against the radical slogan "The personal is the political," but this prin­ciple no longer seems a categorical impera­tive. Deployment of privacy strategies has been an effective strategy for lawyers seek­ing to defend gay rights. Libertarians con­sistently favor abrogation of all sodomy laws as unwarranted intrusions into the private sphere. In this instance they are following the classical liberal principle that the state has no right to prohibit acts committed by competent adults that do not harm others. However, libertarians oppose new legislation banning discrimi­nation against homosexuals in employ­ment, housing, and public accommoda­tion. This opposition stems from the prin­ciple that freedom of assocation is also freedom from association. As a general rule, libertarians are against efforts to achieve equality by governmental inter­vention. This stand alienates not only socialists but many liberal Democrats. At the same time the libertarian critique of adventurism in foreign affairs appeals to these same groups. As indicated, the liber­tarian program straddles both left and right, making it difficult for it to present a clear electoral image. Not surprisingly, liber­tarians have not done well at the polls in the United States, though considerably better than the miniscule Marxist parties.
Roots. It is tempting to dismiss libertarianism as a minor bubble in the political profile of the late twentieth cen­tury. However, its key ideas have deep roots, and two of these have consequences for sexual freedom. The first theme is the idea of reexamining the laws, one by one, to see if they truly contribute to human happiness. In many instances laws are found to have been created for, or captured by special interest groups. The second key theme is the idea of the individual's right to control his or her own body. "Get your laws off my body" turns out to be a new version of an old idea.
Focus on unjust and unnecessary laws was part of the Enlightenment cri­tique of the Old Regime. Voltaire suc­ceeded in mobilizing public opinion by focusing on particular atrocities. One such was the execution of the Protestant Jean Calas in 1762 on a false charge of having murdered his own son. Voltaire showed that Calas' punishment reflected more hatred of his deviant religious faith than any concern for the impartial administra­tion of justice. Later he was to make much of cases of blasphemy and witchcraft.
An overarching theory of legal reform was created by the Italian Enlight­enment thinker, Marquis Cesare Beccaria, whose treatise of 1764, On Crimes and Punishments, was received with almost rapturous enthusiasm throughout Europe. As a utilitarian, Beccaria held that the state's right to punish must be subordinate to the overarching imperative of human happiness. Hence there can be no excuse for torture or excessive punishment. Moreover, unless punishment can be cer­tainly demonstrated to be efficacious, it should be renounced. Wherever possible, social ills should be avoided by treating the root causes in a preventative manner. Thus sodomy (which Beccaria certainly did not favor) has persisted for centuries despite draconian legislation. It should be dealt with, he held, by reforming the places in which it is fostered, such as same-sex boarding schools.
These continental trends sup­ported a comprehensive overhaul of the legal system with a view to radical pruning of bad laws. Before this program could be accomplished, as a consequence of the French Revolution, the European conti­nent had received two important motifs of British origin. One is the notion, devel­oped over several centuries of dispute between king and parliament, that the power of the state must be constantly monitored to see that it does not encroach upon the rights of the individuals and groups that comprise society. Then John Locke and others in his tradition had stressed that private property is closely connected with personal liberty. From this link one can deduce that as one owns one's body, the state has no j ustif ication in seek­ing to control it in the absence of harm to others.
The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The early socialist writers tended to emphasize the collective at the expense of the individual. One among them, however, the visionary Charles Fourier (1772-1837), stands apart. The guiding feature of Fourier's system is the law of attraction he derived from astron­omy. Through this concept he anticipated the libertarian idea of spontaneous order arising from individual needs as against artificial order imposed from above. Among the needs Fourier recognized was sexual expression, including that of same-sex love, and his ideal communities were organized to provide a place for the whole range of sexual expression.
Seminal for the libertarian tradi­tion is the German Max Stirner (1806-1856), the individualist anarchist. Stirner rejected every type of collectivism, and all theories which purported to dis­cern a single, abstract essence of human­ity. At the center of his vision stands the human individual, of whom alone one can have certain knowledge. Stirner, who taught in a girl's school, was not bold enough to develop the corollary of sexual freedom which follows from his theory of absolute individualists. Perhaps his cau­tion was justified. Even at the end of the century, when John Henry Mackay (1864 - 1933) - an anarchist who was also a boy lover - revived Stimer's theories, he did not dare to state frankly their implica­tions for sexual freedom.
The anarchist thinkers are gener­ally reproached for overlooking the or­ganic unity ofsocietyasa collective, rather than a mere aggregate of individuals. No such objection can be made to the thought of the utilitarians Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Unfortunately Bentham's incisive critiques of the criminalization of sodomy long remained in manuscript and were not published until the twentieth century, by which time the ideas had in some respects become dated. Mill, though not concerned with sexual variation, de­fended a fundamental principle of liberty that has continued in honor in the English-speaking world. In "On Liberty" (1859) he affirmed that "the sole end for which mankind is warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection." With this defense of compe­tent adults to do anything they wish pro­vided they do nothing to harm others, he combined a powerful advocacy of freedom of expression. "We can never be sure," he insisted, "that the opinion we are endeav­oring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stiflingit would be an evil still."
A number of these strands were drawn together and stated in a strikingly modern way in the unfortunately little known 1908 Heidelberg doctoral disserta­tion of Kurt Hiller, Das Recht über sich Selbst (The Right over Oneself). This work concerns a broad front of topics: suicide, self-mutilation, duelling, incest, homo­sexuality, bestiality, and abortion. Marshalling a dense body of argumenta­tion in a historical perspective reaching back to classical Roman law, Hiller pro­vided a kind of unified-field theory of of­fenses that he held should not be criminal­ized because they pertain to self-owner­ship. The case for decriminalizing deviant sexual behavior - incest, homosexuality, and bestiality - gains force from the analo­gous (and probably more easily acceptable) arguments for nonsexual deviation. Hiller believes that almost all the rationaliza­tions that have accumulated in favor of criminal sanctions in the categories he surveys have a religious or mystical origin. As such, they are arguments that cannot pass unchallenged in a modem secular state. In this contrast of religion and secu­larism Hiller admits himself a child of the Enlightenment. Ultimately, however, the solution lies in recognizing that the crimi­nalization of all these matters interferes with the right to control one's own body.
In conclusion, it should be em­phasized that the libertarian opposition to the state is founded not only upon anar­chism, with its visceral distrust of author­ity, but on a kind of universal sundown principle: which laws - and there are proba­bly many - do not deserve to remain on the books? They should be struck down because they fetter human liberty and creativity and serve no other useful social purpose. However, the abolition of private property, advocated by many leftists and some anarchists, must not be counte­nanced, for this will undermine one's right to own one's body. Not only does this principle of self-sovereignty he at the heart of the libertarian social philosophy, it makes possible its particular contribution to the cause of sexual liberty.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, New York: Basic Books, 1974; Ralph Raico, Gay Rights: A Libertarian Approach, Wash­ington: McBride for President Commit­tee, 1976; Murray Rothbard, Ethics of Liberty, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1982.
Wayne R. Dynes

Libertinism
This current of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European thought, which was imbued with ancient skeptical philosophy (Pyrrhonism j, offered a materi­alist approach to reality. It reflected also the "polemic of the three imposters" (Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed) and the heterodox Aristotelianism of the later Middle Ages.
Basic Features. What passes un­der the name of libertinism today is in fact a heterogeneous amalgam of beliefs and ideas, which are philosophical in the broad sense, and moral as well. Despite the di­versity of the phenomena grouped under the umbrella of the label, all the variants of libertinism share a family resemblance; they affiliate at least one of its constituent elements (e.g., belief in the mortality of the soul, the theory of religion as impos­ture, moral relativism, and skepticism).
Not having coalesced into a school, libertinism never created a dog­matic system; it is rather a climate of thought and an overall approach. It was often more a matter of problems than specific solutions. Thus in response to the problem of the existence of God the liber­tines oscillated between atheism' and deism, and some were even Christian believers.
The plasticity of libertinism is also shown by the presence of libertine elements in the religious polemics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - especially when Christian sects accused one another of being the creations of imposters. Not surprisingly skepticism in relation to religion provoked a vast cam­paign by religious defenders, both Catho­lic and Protestant, against libertinism. These attacks lingered in the tendency to equate libertinism with dissolute license: even today, in common parlance the liber­tine is simply a rake.
With respect to genuine libertin­ism, a typical claim is that all religions are the carapaces of cunning imposters, who have taken advantage of popular credulity to terrorize the ignorant with fables so as to keep them submissive to those who would manipulate them. This premise yields the conclusion that there can be no "revealed" moral code, but only what the educated man succeeds in fashioning for himself through the application of Reason in search of virtue and truth.
Libertinism does not accept pro­hibitions on conduct that are based solely on the revelation of holy scriptures of any sort. Thus its morality is intended to be strictly rational, and as such secular. Moral imperatives and laws come not from the dictates of religion but from comprehen­sion of the need for rules in order to obtain a well-ordered civil society.
A last major component of the sensual morality of the libertines was the widespread belief in the mortality of the soul. This doctrine was taught at Padua, a major center of the trend, by Cesare Cremonini (1550-1631), who based his thought on that of Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525).
Sexual Aspects. Libertines held that, as a loving and benign mother, not a cruel one, Nature has provided men with sexual organs so that they may use them. Man is not bom to suffer, but to enjoy the pleasures which he might seek, provided that others are not harmed. Since each man may only expect a single Ufe, the earthly one, there is no profit in suffering in exchange for a nonexistent heavenly reward.
These are the reasons why the Ubertine thinker could not fail to place a positive value on human sexuality - in­cluding its homosexual aspects. For him homosexual relations have, on the moral plane, the same dignity as heterosexual ones; morally they are indifferent. For the libertine the Biblical condemnation of sodomy is the ultimate absurdity; an illus­tration of this view is the pederastic text L'Alcibiade fanciullo a scola. Here too there can be no wrong in making use of one's genitals to obtain the pleasure that Nature herself has made possible. Noth­ing can be "against nature" that occurs through Nature's grace.
The famous declaration attributed to the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe - "all they that love not tobacco and boys [are] fools" - synthesizes the lib­ertine approach to the question; one has to be a fool not to appreciate the pleasures that life offers.
Also typical of libertinism is the lowering of the whole supernatural di­mension to a human level through the attribution of human defects and desires (including sexual ones) to the personages of sacred history. Thus there emerged those terrible "blasphemies" which so convulsed the church. In the homosexual realm a typical libertine affirmation is one that can be documented several times across the centuries - in a Venetian Inquisition trial of 1550 against one Francesco Calcagno, in the 1593 accusation against Christopher Marlowe, in a Lisbon Inquisition trial (1618) of one Manuel Figuereido, and in the Essai sur la peinture of Denis Diderot (1713-1784) - namely that Jesus and St. John (the beloved disciple) were lovers.
Sexual heterodoxy was quickly taken advantage of by the adversaries of the libertines to present them as monsters of vice, and immoral individuals capable of any evil in order to obtain carnal pleas­ure. In actual practice libertines respected human laws as far as possible. Convinced that they belonged to an elite of a few enlightened persons in a world dominated by ignorance and stupidity, they had no intention of creating scandal among the masses who were too obtuse to grasp the reasons for their behavior.
In fact libertinism was an intrin­sically conservative attitude: it is not an accident that Antonio Rocco (1586-1652), author of the Alcibiade fanciullo a scola just cited, was one of the most determined opponents of Galileo Galilei. The libertine held that the ignorant masses, incapable of curbing their animal passions through Reason, needed the restraints offered by religion and superstition. For this reason the libertine attitude toward religion is one of amused indulgence - yielding at most to mocking blasphemy - but refrain­ing from outright and sustained attack. In this perspective superstition, though an evil, was a necessary evil.
Histoiical Vicissitudes. Initially strong in Italy in the sixteenth and seven­teenth centuries, libertinism attracted the determined persecution of Counterreformation society which succeeded in driv­ing it underground. The shrinkage of Ital­ian libertinism nonetheless did not mean its end, while in seventeenth-century France and England it enjoyed a notewor­thy flowering. One need only mention the figure of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), the witty Restoration rake whose writings heralded the liveliness and license of eighteenth-century England.
Nonetheless, the seeds of decline were sown in the seventeenth century when Western thought cut away its ground of scientific speculation, which was rooted in Aristotelianism. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) proposed an approach to materialism that was more productive. Only in the moral field did the libertine trend succeed in remaining alive until the rise of the Enlightenment, of which it constituted one of the sources.
Arguments and attitudes typical of libertinism reemerged in the writings of the thinkers of the Enlightenment: one of the most radical sequelae of their thought was the work of the Marquis de Sade.
Yet this author marks the last stage of libertinism, for in him it becomes what the adversaries of the trend reproached it for being: the search for pleas­ures (reserved for the elite) which stopped at nothing, the sufferings of others being of no account. This attitude is very far from the equilibrium and urbanity of the begin­nings of libertinism. With Sade the prin­ciple of maximizing the enjoyment of the single existence of man, and hence of a positive and joyous attitude to life, be­comes a search for pleasure that can lead to suffering and death - as seen in the 120 Days of Sodom.
Having reached this stage of in­tellectual no return, libertine thought became moribund. The French Revolu­tion tore asunder the social fabric in which libertinism had sheltered its last adher­ents, and after this point it must be re­garded as extinct.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Alan Bray, Homosexu­ality in Renaissance England, London: Gay Men's Press, 1982; Giovanni Dall'Orto, "Antonio Rocco and the Background of His 'L'Alcibiade fanciullo a scola,'" in Among Men, Among Women, Amsterdam: University, 1983, pp. 224-32; René Pintard, Le libertinage érudit dans la première moitié du dix-septième siècle, 2 vols., Paris: Boivin, 1943.
Giovanni Dall'Orto

LIBRARIES AND ARCHIVES
Because of the clandestine or marginal origins of so many publications dealing with nonconforming sexuality, their representation in public and univer­sity libraries is thin. Sometimes librarians reject donations of erotic items (even schol­arly books), or relegate them to special collections, the existence of which may be unknown even to sophisticated and well-qualified users. At the British Museum (now the British Library), the books in the Private Case were not entered in the main catalogue until the end of the 1960s. As such items are often stolen, there may be good reason to keep them secure, but such precautions are quite different from c5">1982; Giovanni Dall'Orto, "Antonio Rocco and the Background of His 'L'Alcibiade fanciullo a scola,'" in Among Men, Among Women, Amsterdam: University, 1983, pp. 224-32; René Pintard, Le libertinage érudit dans la première moitié du dix-septième siècle, 2 vols., Paris: Boivin, 1943.
Giovanni Dall'Orto

LIBRARIES AND ARCHIVES
Because of the clandestine or marginal origins of so many publications dealing with nonconforming sexuality, their representation in public and univer­sity libraries is thin. Sometimes librarians reject donations of erotic items (even schol­arly books), or relegate them to special collections, the existence of which may be unknown even to sophisticated and well-qualified users. At the British Museum (now the British Library), the books in the Private Case were not entered in the main catalogue until the end of the 1960s. As such items are often stolen, there may be good reason to keep them secure, but such precautions are quite different from con­cealing their existence altogether.
Some Basic Features of Research Libraries. With the lessening of taboos such books are now more commonly ac­cessioned and catalogued, but they remain restricted to a small number of libraries, from which, however, they may usually be borrowed through interlibrary loan. In the case of brochures, articles, or selections from books photocopying is a good alter­native. Bearing in mind the limitations of its several editions, the National Union Catalogue should be consulted in check­ing locations. It is also worthwhile to examine the printed catalogues of the British Museum/Library in London and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. De­termined researchers prepare lists of rare sources so that in visiting the cities in which they are found, they can consult them.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that in North America at least a high propor­tion of male librarians are homosexual. Only in 1971, however, was the Gay Task Force of the American Library Association formed. Under the leadership of Barbara Gittings, this group has created a number of short bibliographies, which have been distributed to librarians and patrons in a successful effort to improve the scope of books on homosexuality in the average public library. It is here, after all, that many young and closeted gay men and lesbians go to seek information about themselves; in earlier decades they were likely to find only judgmental accounts under the category of "abnormal psychol­ogy."
In view of their rarity and inher­ent interest, books in the realm of "erot­ica" have appealed to well-to-do collec­tors, and a specialized book trade has grown up to meet the demand. We have a detailed record of the contents of one such private holding produced by the collector himself, the Victorian Henry Spencer Ashbee ("Pisanus Fraxi") in three volumes in 1877-85, and reprinted as Bibliography of Forbidden Books (New York, 1962).
In order to compensate for diffi­culty of access elsewhere, research insti­tutions and gay organizations have sought to build up their own libraries. The Berlin Institute of Sexual Science, headed by Magnus Hirschfeld, had 20,000 volumes, together with a large picture collection, and a unique archive of sexual histories. Following Hitler's accession to power, a campaign of bookbuming was begun to rid the German people of "unhealthy" influ­ences. The Institute was one of the first targets, and on May 10, 1933, the bulk of its collections were destroyed in a public ceremony. Although no catalogue of this library has survived, many of the printed items contained were noted in the lists published annually in the fahibuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen (until 1923). A contemporary, though smaller Dutch li­brary, assembled by Jacob van Schorer, was catalogued. Today, the library of the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research on the campus of Indiana University at Bloomington is unquestionably the largest col­lection devoted to all types of sexual ex­pression.
Gay and Lesbian Archives. As the American gay movement emerged in the 1950s a need for specialized libraries began to be felt, not only for research but also for the convenience of members who could not find even fairly innocuous gay and lesbian novels at their tax-supported public libraries. Modest budgets restricted acquisitions so that only in rare instances was it possible to obtain the classic Euro­pean studies of the subject; in practice these organizational collections consisted mainly of pulp paperbacks donated by members. For want of security the collec­tions were sporadically pilfered, and when the organizations folded, the materials that had been assembled were usually dispersed.
To deal with the problem a new institution, the gay and lesbian archive, emerged. Appropriately, the largest of these is located in Los Angeles, where the mod­ern American movement began. The Inter­national Gay and Lesbian Archive (IGLA) comprises some 25,000 books, together with clippings, photographs, artworks, and gay/lesbian ephemera and memorabilia (flyers, banners, buttons, etc.). The IGLA core derives from the private collection started by the curator, Jim Kepner, in 1943; it was opened as a public institution in Hollywood in 1979. Also in Southern California are the Baker Memorial Library of ONE, Inc. The holdings of the Homo­sexual Information Center, formerly in Hollywood, have been transferred to Shreveport, Louisiana. These institu­tions are rivaled by the Canadian Gay Archives, which began in Toronto in 1973 as an offshoot of the monthly The Body Pohtic. This collection concentrates on, though is not limited to, Canadian mate­rial, and has issued a number of useful publications. The Thesaurus, or detailed subject listing, created by the Canadian group is probably the best available. In New York the Lesbian Herstory Archives, restricted to women's materials, is the largest collection of its kind. Bibliographi­cal information is provided by the Lesbian Herstory Archives News, which began in 1975. Smaller archives flourished in a number of other North American cities, and others are being developed in Europe and Australia. Some European scholars take the position, however, that it is better to integrate holdings into public collec­tions where they are less exposed to at­tacks of the kind that destroyed the Berlin collection.
While some archives have been forced to shut down owing to lack of funds, personnel, and user interest, and others have gone into temporary storage for simi­lar reasons, enough stability has been achieved to permit the formulation of some basic operating principles. At the outset it is important to determine the scope of the archive and the public that it is intended to serve. These definitions will reflect in part the presence or absence of complementary institutions in the region, so that the exis­tence of a first-class university library would make superfluous the acquisition of some mainstream items. Securing ade­quate premises, not only for present col­lections but for future growth, is a major consideration. Self-owned buildings are the ideal but this is rarely attainable. It may be possible to share quarters with a cognate institution, thus reducing costs. Installa­tion in a private home can only be consid­ered a temporary measure, as access tends to be restricted. Materials should not simply be received on a passive basis, but an outreach must be made to secure cate­gories that are not adequately represented. Scholars and movement figures can often be persuaded to give their papers to the archive, benefitting from a tax write-off. During the period in which the f acility is being established, some donors may prefer to "loan" materials with a view to deeding them over later when they are satisfied that stability has been achieved. Increas­ingly archivists need to extend their hori­zons beyond "hard copy" (print and manu­script materials on paper) to embrace films, tape recordings, video tapes, and other electronic modes of data storage. For day-to-day work copiers and word processors are essential.
As regards the organizational papers donated by groups, it may be desir­able to keep these together as a subcollection in order to preserve their integrity, rather than mingling them with related items of different provenance. The issu­ance of a newsletter is a major desidera­tum, not only to make a larger public aware of the collection, but also as a way of stimulating donor interest. Cataloguing depends on the existence of a thesaurus of categories, which may be self-generated or adopted from another archive. Needless to say, funding is a perennial problem, since governmental assistance usually cannot be obtained, even if wanted. Development of a dedicated and harmonious corps of volunteers is essential, together with "angels" to provide regular financial sub­sidy. Most archives reject charging user fees, but such policies must be reviewed if they spell the difference between continu­ing and shutting down.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. James A. Fraser and Harold A. Averill, Organizing an Archives: The Canadian Gay Archives Experience, Toronto: Canadian Gay Archives, 1983.
Wayne R. Dynes

Lifestyle
In current usage the term life­style refers to the ensemble of choices that an individual may make in employment, leisure activities, dress, and self-presenta­tion that serve to link him with a larger group in society (e.g., the hippie, jetset, and yuppie lifestyles). The element of choice is central: although an individual may have been raised in one lifestyle, he may elect to join another. (Income is usu­ally the limiting factor.) This usage con­trasts with the meaning of the term when first introduced in English in translations (from 1929 on) of the writings of the depth psychologist Alfred Adler, for whom it denotes an individual's basic character as formed in childhood, after which it cannot be changed. (In German Lebensstil had been used by Georg Simmel as early as 1900. ) The shift in meaning m ay have been assisted by the somewhat similar expres­sion "way of life."
Problems of Definition. Lifestyle is currently a journalistic rather than a social science term. For this reason its definition and boundaries are not always easy to determine. In theory everyone has a lifestyle, but in practice the word at­taches to those who have departed from mainstream conventionality. This depar­ture occurs either through upward or downward mobility. The yuppie and "fast lane" lifestyles can only be supported through a good deal of discretionary in­come, while the hippie or dropout exults in his flight from middle-class respectabil­ity (though these individuals may not be as poor as they seem). It may be, however, that the unreconstructed "square," who retains the habits and mores of the envi­ronment in which he was brought up, is also following a lifestyle; as José Ortega y Gasset remarked in a different context,
not to choose is also to choose. All the same, the square may decry "trendy" pursuers of lifestyles, who he feels are eroding the moral fabric of society. Simi­larly, leftists have attacked "lifestylism" as mere self-indulgence, a hedonistic dis­regard of the call to make a revolution. Then lifestyles may overlap: a motorcy­clist may participate both in the leather gay subculture and the biker subculture. Finally, on closer inspection what appears to be one lifestyle, may break up into a bundle of related phenomena. Although the gay lifestyle may be discussed in a unitary fashion, one should bear in mind that it has many subcomponents, so that (e.g.) the lifestyle of a lesbian business­woman is very different from that of a lesbian S & M adept. Neglect of these very real differences has sometimes hobbled the effectiveness of gay and lesbian activ­ist organizations, which tend to assume a greater social homogeneity than actually exists.
What remains is a sense of plural­ism. Here the second component, "style" is important. As in the case of the Gothic, the Mannerist, and the Baroque styles in art history, one can recognize diversity without insisting that any one manifesta­tion be honored as the norm.
Lifestyles and the Consumer So­ciety. All these caveats aside, the rise of a plurality of lifestyles seems to presuppose the existence of a relatively wealthy con­sumer society. Amazon tribesmen do not have a choice of lifestyles. The affirmation of a lifestyle entails conspicuous consump­tion and conspicuous leisure. Moreover, this pattern cannot be simply treated in class terms, for it reflects a symbolic mode of existence that goes beyond mere socio­economic status. Adopting a lifestyle pro­claims one's value system and one's per­sonal self-definition to the world at large. Hence the term "alternative lifestyle," which connotes that its bearer dissents from the conventional wisdom of society's mainstream. In this sense a lifestyle may be a new form of heresy, one expressed in conduct rather than formal belief system.
A lifestyle includes modes of behavior, speech, dress, thought, and so­cial attitudes that define a segment of the population and serve as a model for those who seek acceptance by the peer group. At the same time it may have an individual aspect that serves to distinguish the sub­ject from others of his social class and ethnic group; this phenomenon is seen, for example, in some types of teenage rebel­lion. Having a lifestyle is regarded as a major undertaking, requiring a huge in­vestment of the subject'sresources of time, energy, and money; it is the outcome of a process of selection from the multitude of consumer goods and cultural activities offered to the citizen of an industrial coun­try by the marketers of such commodities. The lifestyles of celebrities, publicized as they are by the mass media, become the models imitated by the less rich and fa­mous. The media, especially television, films, and glossy magazines, play a deci­sive catalytic role in launching new trends. And since sexual activity is an important part of adults' leisure, homosexuality is a determining factor in the lifestyle of many, though not all, participants in the gay subculture of the United States and Westem Europe.
The Cay Lifestyle. Attainment of increased leisure and of greater discretion­ary income undoubtedly furthered the emergence of the contemporary gay life­style. The earlier part of this century wit­nessed a clandestine homosexual subcul­ture in the big cities of the Western world, but it was the gay liberation movement of the late 1960s that created a self-conscious public with its own media and its own social identity. The rejection of heterosexuality with all that it implied - includ­ing participation in activities traditionally defined as appropriate for male-female couples - was matched by the growth of a new set of values and standards shared by the emerging gay world of metropolitan America. A characteristic style of dress, patronage of particular bars, bathhouses, and resorts, subscription to the gay mass media, and participation in community events of a more or less political content were the criteria of a gay lifestyle. At the same time a lifestyle could also be sym­bolic behavior aimed at attracting sexual partners of one's preference.
The hallmarks of the gay lifestyle of the 1970s were: living as a single adult, or in a casual union with a partner of the same sex that could be terminated at will; freedom from the obligations of conven­tional heterosexual marriage; fashions of dress and coiffure that marked the subject as part of the gay subculture; a level of discretionary income considerably above the norm for a heterosexual couple; accep­tance of sexual experimentation and prom­iscuity if not as the norm, at least as behavior to be accepted in others without criticism; and periodic attendance at demonstrations, rallies, meetings, and similar events that brought together di­verse strata of the gay community on specific occasions such as the annual Gay Pride Day marches in major cities.
A given lifestyle may be a slavish copy of behavior which the individual has been led by the media to deem appropriate for himself, or it may be an expression of an individuality that approaches the realm of the creative in private life. The media produced in the metropolitan areas and the celebrities whose fame extends be­yond the gay subculture into the larger society of contemporary America serve as foci of lifestyle values that radiate into the hinterland and across national bounda­ries. Publications such as the Advocate in the United States and Gai pied in France disseminate the values of the gay lifestyle throughout their respective countries, usually to an upscale readership. It is sig­nificant that although the United States developed a homosexual movement well after Germany and the Netherlands, it was the American popular culture of the 1960s (disdainfully termed "cocacolonization" by some European intellectuals) which proved the vehicle for the spread of a worldwide gay lifestyle patterned on the American example. The reception of this subculture was part of the continuing Americanization of Western Europe and the Third World in the 1970s, and of the spread of a consumption-oriented, pleas­ure-seeking way of life. Abatement of fears of venereal disease and of legal prosecu­tion for one's sexual activity contributed to the tacit acceptance of a markedly hedonistic lifestyle, which includes drug usage, frequent change of sexual partners, and a restless search for new diversions and gratifications. In this respect the gay subculture perpetuated the tradition that had originated in the bohemias of the nineteenth century, as well as the "alter­native lifestyles" that came into vogue with the radical wave of the Vietnam War era.
Recent Changes. Only with the threat of AIDS in the 1980s did a monoga­mous homosexual lifestyle gain in popu­larity and achieve for a certain part of the gay community the status of a norm. Also, as conservative values displaced the lib­eral or even radical ones of the late 1960s, the forces shaping Western social attitudes began to affect the behavior of the deni­zens of the gay subculture. But the con­sciousness of being part of a minority - one whose conduct differs significantly from that of the heterosexual majority; whose sexual activity is still strongly ta­booed in the eyes of many; and whose values deviate markedly from the tradi­tional norm - continues to shape the life­style of the homosexual.
To be sure, the homosexual life­style is not monolithic, and shows con­trasts between coupled and single indi­viduals, between leather adepts and those who prefer "vanilla sex." As the foregoing discussion has indicated, the relative importance of these "sublif estyles" in the mix has shifted over time, and further changes may be expected.
Conclusion. The choice of a life­style is one of the freedoms that modern society accords to its members. Premodern societies often prescribed the behavior of an individual on the basis of social class, family position, and age so rigorously as nearly to obliterate the personality of the subject. The atomization of society, the emancipation of the adult from the tute­lage of the extended family, and the con­stant drive of the global economic system to find markets for new objects of con­sumption - all these have contributed to the emergence of variegated lifestyles as behavioral options for the citizen of the contemporary world. The gay lifestyle owes its viability in turn to the freeing of sexual morality from the narrow limits of previ­ous centuries, and to the emergence from clandestinity of an "alternative culture" that could openly disdain many of the norms of the still intolerant larger society.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Michael E. Sobel, Lifestyle and Social Structure: Concepts, Definitions, Analyses, New York: Academic Press, 1981.
Warren Johansson

Llangollen, Ladies of
The Irishwomen Lady Eleanor Butler (1739-1829) and Sarah Ponsonby (1755-1831) enjoyed a relationship that lasted over fifty years, during which time they became celebrities whose fidelity was deeply admired. Lady Eleanor, who came from a noble family that had retained its Catholicism, was educated in a convent in France, at a time when "particular friend­ships" were easily tolerated. Returning to Ireland, she showed no interest in hetero­sexual marriage and immersed herself in books. In 1768, however, she met Sarah Ponsonby, a member of a well-to-do Dub­lin family, who was then only thirteen. Over the years their friendship ripened through visits and correspondence. Finally, in 1778, they decided to elope. After a first attempt failed, they succeeded in making their way to Wales. After inspecting the splendid Welsh landscapes together, they settled the following year in a rustic cot­tage (Plas Newydd) near Llangollen, which was to remain the site of their "retire­ment" for the rest of their lives.
The ladies immediately set them­selves a program of regular life patterns and self-improvement - their "system" as they termed it. In an era before mass communications they bought books vora­ciously, and read to each other daily. Lit­erature, languages, and geography were among the subjects they addressed. Their favorite author was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who influenced their romantic cult of nature and the sublime. Attentive obser­vation of the changing seasons was com­bined with astute management of the farm. In fact, it was probably the attachment of the ladies to the cult of nature, a dominant trend of late eighteenth-century sensibil­ity, that served to validate their relation­ship in the eyes of contemporaries. Al­though lesbianism was known (and usu­ally condemned) in this period, it tended to be associated with racy urban environ­ments, especially the world of the theatre. Because of their birth and exemplary life style, a mantle of respectability protected the ladies of Llangollen for all their Uves.
They carried on an enormous correspondence, and could be sharp with their friends if replies were not immedi­ately forthcoming. In time they attracted such visitors as Lady Caroline Lamb and Josiah Wedgewood. William Wordsworth and Robert Southey wrote poetry under their roof. In addition to the letters, the Uves of the ladies are recorded in diaries. In these they referred to each other as "Be­loved." In modem terms theirs was a "butch-fem" relationship, inasmuch as Lady Eleanor was somewhat masculine in appearance and usualiy took the initiative in decision making, while the younger Sarah sweetly followed her lead. Disputes were rare. The surviving writings contain no hint of genital relations, but this lack of direct evidence does not necessarily mean that they sublimated their "passion" (a term they were not afraid to use). In an era before the medically inspired "morbidification" of romantic friendship between women, theirs was a true marriage of the mind, spirit, and affections. Ever steadfast in their observance of the principles that they had adopted, they had a friendship that captured the imagination of their contemporaries in a way never before achieved, at least in the English-speaking world. In an age of transition, the art of living of the Ladies of Llangollen may offer an object lesson.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Elizabeth Mavor, The Ladies of Llangollen, London: Michael Joseph, 1971.
Evelyn Cettone

Loitering
American law has tended to crimi­nalize loitering with intent to commit a lewd or lascivious act or loitering with the purpose of soliciting or engaging in sexu­ally deviant conduct. If such conduct constitutes a crime, as in the 25 states in which sodomy laws have not been re­pealed, the First Amendment does not protect solicitation for the purpose of a criminal act.
States that proscribe loitering with intent of solicitation do not require the uttering of the forbidden words. "Prior restraint" may thus cause people not to linger in certain places to talk to someone out of fear of having their conduct misin­terpreted by a vice officer. Such a law is too broad to be constitutional and unconstitu­tionally limits free speech. Thus a demur­rer, a challenge to the constitutionality of the law, can often prevail against this inchoate charge. It is frequently the case that repeated demurrers are required over many years before judges begin seriously to examine the constitutionality of the law.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Roberta Achtenberg, ed., Sexual Orientation and the Law, New York: Clark Boardman, 1985.
William A. Percy

Lombroso, Cesare (1836-1909)
Italian criminologist. A descen­dant of a Sephardic Jewish family, Lom­broso was a physician who became the founder of modem criminology. Follow­ing contemporary thinkingwhich stressed the evolutionary and innate factors in human behavior, Lombroso developed the theory of the born criminal [delinquente nato), an atavistic throwback to earlier stages of human evolution. In line with the belief propagated by the German biolo­gist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) that onto­genesis recapitulates phylogenesis, Lom­broso believed that the bom criminal, like the savage, lacks the higher nervous cen­ters that restrain the lower animal in­stincts, so that he freely engages in muti­lation, torture, promiscuity, pederasty, tattooing of the body, and similar practices abhorrent to civilized human beings; such individuals could be identified by the stig­mata of degeneration on their bodies.
The school of criminal anthro­pology created by Lombroso, with j ournals in Italian, French, and German, reached the peak of its influence just at the time when sexual inversion became a topic of controversy in psychiatric and legal circles. Although Lombroso had read Arrigo Tamassia's paper of 1878 at the time of its publication and approved its conclusions, in the debate over homosexuality he proved a bitter foe of toleration. At the Interna­tional Congress of Criminal Anthropology in Amsterdam in 1901, he was one of those who, outraged by Arnold Aletrino's paper on "The Social Situation of the Homosex­ual," denounced the invert as a degenerate who should be thrown into prison if he acts out his diseased urges. His colleague in Vienna, Moritz Benedict, even urged that homosexuals who would not abstain from their criminal practices be castrated. In later controversy Lombroso was op­posed by the German psychiatrist Paul Nacke (d. 1913), who calmly answered all his arguments on the basis of his own far greater familiarity with the subject. Also,
in France the Archives d'anthropologic criminelle published a series of articles by Marc-André Raffalovich and others who combatted the notion of homosexuality as a disease.
Long decried by the environmen­talist school, Lombroso remains a disputed thinker in the history of criminology and constitutional biology. Since the Mendelian laws of heredity were unknown until the very end of his lifetime, his own pio­neering work was often impressionistic and based on phenotypes rather than geno­types. In the 1970s and 1980s Lombroso's views attracted new interest, suggesting that something of value may be retrieved from his otherwise time-bound concep­tual scheme.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Renzo Villa, II deviante e i suoi segni: Lombroso e la nascita dell'antropología crimínale, Milan: Angeli, 1985.
Warren Johansson

London
The capital first of England, then of the United Kingdom and of the British Empire, London has played a major role in the history of homosexuality in Western Europe. The establishment of a unified monarchy in the wake of the victory of William the Conqueror (1066) laid the foundations for London's supremacy. Al­though it was never a major center of university life or of the church, London still had the court, the great merchants, and later the press and the coffee houses, the publishers and the theatre that were the basis of English cultural and literary Ufe. As England emerged from the back­wardness and insignificance, as well as the internecine strife, of the medieval period and created its merchant fleet and over­seas empire, London grew into a world-class city. The dialect of London became the literary norm of modem English, which after England's victory in the Seven Years War (1763) achieved the status of a world language and a medium of international discourse.
The Middle Ages. Richard of Devizes' Chronicle of the Times of King Richard the First includes an account of the underworld subcultures of London in 1192 that mentions at least four classes of individuals who certainly or probably engaged in homosexual activity: glabriones, "smooth-cheeked, pretty, effeminate boys," pusiones, "little hustlers, kept boys,"molles, "effeminates," mascularii, "man-lovers," a term found only in this passage in all of Medieval Latin, through plainly deriving from the mascuiorum con-cubitores of 1 Corinthians 6:9. Thus even in the early Plantagenet period London had its erotic subculture frequented by those who ignored or defied the official norms of the Church in the sphere of sexual morality.
The Renaissance. The Tudor era saw the enactment of the first statute against homosexual behavior, 25 Henry VHI c. 6, which ordained the death pen­alty - by hanging, not by burning at the stake - for "the detestable and abominable Vice of Buggery." It is interesting to note that English is the only modern language in which buggery has remained the legal term for the crime in question; the idioms of the Continent all discarded a word that smacked too much of medieval intoler­ance. But the Renaissance, which brought the cultural life of the capital to unsur­passed heights, saw the revival of the homoeroticism that had inspired much of classical literature. The theatres at which the plays of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and the lesser dramatists of that time were performed had all-male casts, and by tradi­tion the roles of women were taken by boys, so that an ambiance of sexual ambi­guity and double-entendre hung over an institution that was constantly assailed for "immorality." Christopher Marlowe wrote one play, Edward the Second (1594), about a homosexual king of England, and another, The Massacre at Paris (1590), which inserts the French king Henri LH and his minions into the episode of the St. Bartholomew's Eve slaughter of the Hu­guenots. He even ascribed to Jesus Christ an erotic interest in John, the beloved disciple. Shakespeare composed several plays with the motif of the boy actor who appears first as a woman and then in the guise of his own sex, is courted by a man and by a woman, and finally won by the former. The court of James I, after whom the fundamentalists' favorite translation of the Bible is named, had a homoerotic atmosphere owing to the king's fondness for male favorites who achieved positions of wealth and influence thanks to their royal patron.
The Restoration. The Civil War and the Commonwealth were followed by the Restoration, during which the first signs of a modem homosexual subculture emerge. The social stratification and ano­nymity of the metropolis facilitated the growth of a clandestine network of meet­ing places for individuals with unconven­tional desires. Restoration drama, the novels of Henry Fielding and John Cleland, and the prints of William Hogarth have given the London of that era a reputation for sensuality that contrasted with the sober life of the English countryside. In the late 1720s London was scandalized by the discovery of homosexual clubs, molly houses, in which some men would don women's clothing and even go through mock marriages. In 1717 the Swiss entre­preneur John James Heidegger introduced fashionable masquerade balls where men dressed as women, women as men; at such affairs it was possible to engage in same-sex amorous dalliance which could be disguised as mistaking the true gender of one's partner. Also, wealthy Englishmen began to travel abroad in search of erotic pleasures, in particular to Venice, which had become the Las Vegas of late seven­teenth-century Europe, and which may have supplied the name of the condom (from Italian guantone "gauntlet"), first mass produced and sold in London from 1705 onwards.
Renewed Intolerance. Although burning at the stake was never the penalty for buggery in England, a fate in some ways even worse lay in wait for the convicted sodomite. Such culprits were exposed in the pillory to abuse and assaults of the mob, which could freely pelt the guilty parties with filth and missiles of every kind. The belief that Sodom and Gomor­rah had been destroyed because of the sexual depravity of their inhabitants justi­fied these cruel penalties in the eyes of the populace. The Napoleonic wars saw a renewed outburst of intolerance, which resulted in numerous prosecutions. In 1810 a homosexual rendezvous on Vere Street in London was raided by the police, and nine men were subsequently convicted and placed in the pillory, where the com­mons vented their wrath on them in a manner that bespoke the intensity of popular hatred for those guilty of "unnatu­ral crimes." Even when Sir Robert Peel asked Parliament to reform the archaic criminal laws of England in 1828, he urged that the proofs of the offense of buggery be made fewer to facilitate conviction, while the death penalty was not reduced to life imprisonment until 1861.
The Victorian Era. But homosex­ual life persisted beneath the surface of London's commercial and industrial life and the Victorian respectability of the capital of a great empire "on which the sun never set." Homosexuals of the upper social strata rubbed shoulders with hustlers from the depths of the criminal underworld, a phenomenon so aberrant from the stand­point of a class society that as late as the middle of the twentieth century the police could be moved to an investigation merely by evidence of associations of this kind. In 1889 a scandal occurred in which a house in Cleveland Street was discovered to be a place of assignation for homosexual clients and telegraph boys who served them as prostitutes. Oscar Wilde's ruin was also caused by his involvement with this crimi­nal milieu when it was revealed by his archenemy, the Marquess of Queensbury, in 1895.
The Twentieth Century. The hypocrisy with which English culture enveloped the phenomenon of homosexu­ality long obscured the facts of this subcul­ture in the London of the twentieth cen­tury. Although English law was as puni­tive as German, no organized gay move­ment analogous to the one in Berlin could develop in theBritish capital, even if circles like the Bloomsbury one could quietly cultivate a homosexual ethos in a rarified milieu inaccessible to the British masses. The theatre and other cultural institu­tions were enclaves of homosexual influ­ence, but they always had to defer publicly to the conventional norms of sexual mo­rality. The conviction of Sir John Gielgud for public importuning in 1953 lifted the lid for once on this covert phenomenon.
The campaign for adoption of the recommendations of the Wolfenden Re­port was too limited in its scope and the roster of its supporters to affect the life of the average homosexual in London, which after the austerity of the immediate post­war period changed into the center of a vibrant, influential mass culture. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were sym­bols of the world-wide impact of this new wave, which was paralleled by legalized gambling and Carnaby Street fashions that shaped the image of "swinging London." The plays of Joe Orton (who was, however, murdered by his lover in 1967) caught much of the wit and nonchalant cynicism of this era. During this decade a commer­cial gay subculture arose, with its base in the roaring pubs of South Kensington and Hampstead. The police continued even after the law reform of 1967 to harass individuals whom they caught in public places such as parks and "cottages" (toi­lets).
The Stonewall Rebellion in New York in 1969 created American political models such as Gay Activists Alliance which were then imported into the mother country, crystalizing first in a national gay organization, the Campaign for Homosex­ual Equality (CHE). Those who saw this group as too conservative and middle-class set up more radical formations, at first under anarchist and then increasingly under Marxist auspices. During the 1970s the London-based Gay News (now defunct) ranked as one of the world's three or four leading gay newspapers.
The economic setbacks experi­enced by the country caused rising social tensions, marked by racial disturbances in London and elsewhere. While several London boroughs gave direct financial aid to gay and lesbian organizations, a rising tide of homophobia was abetted by ma­nipulation of the AIDS crisis through sensational articles in the tabloid newspa­pers. The new political situation - includ­ing a solid Conservative majority in Parlia­ment - led to the passage of Clause 28 of the Local Government Act (1988), which forbade local governments to do anything to "promote" homosexuality, yet techni­cal errors in the drafting of the bill ren­dered it at least partly inoperative. With all the ambivalence of its history, contempo­rary London is firmly established as a major center of homosexual life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Michael Elliman and Frederick Roll, The Pink Plaque Guide to London, London: Gay Men's Press, 1986; H. Montgomery Hyde, The Love That Dared Not Speak Its Name: A Candid History of Homosexuality in Britain, Boston: Little, Brown, 1970.
Ward Houser

Lorca, Federico García (1898-1936)
Poet and dramatist, Spain's most famous author after Cervantes. Born in the southern province of Granada and influ­enced by the Andalusian revival of the early twentieth century, Lorca lived from the age of 20 in Madrid. In the famous "Residencia de Estudiantes," he met and collaborated with such future celebrities as Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, with the latter of whom he had an amorous rela­tionship of several years' duration.
An emotional and literary crisis in 1928 led to an extended visit to New York and Cuba in 1929-30. With the birth of the liberal Spanish republic in 1931, Lorca moved from intellectual to main­stream circles. The government sponsored his traveling theatre troupe, "La Barraca," which took Spanish classics to isolated small towns. His own plays were produced with success, and he began to receive a significant income from royalties.
The revolt against the Spanish republic in 1936 brought Lorca's assassi­nation by a semi-official death squad. An extensive literature exists concerning the mechanics of and motives for his death, which immediately became an interna­tional incident and a symbol of fascist stupidity and anti-intellectualism. Lorca's leftist sympathies, friends, and relatives would be sufficient to explain his execu­tion, but much evidence suggests that his sexual orientation, activities, and writings were at least as important.
Lorca is an exceptional case of an author subject to self-censorship and, after his death, to deliberate manipulation and "cleansing" of his image by surviving family members. As a result his works and thought have been inaccurately discussed, and they remain imperfectly known and in some cases all but unknown. At the time of his death Lorca was best known for his Gypsy Ballads, still his most popular and accessible, yet somewhat unrepresenta­tive book. Lesser-known volumes of po­etry, and those dramas found unoffensive by his heirs, were published or reprinted in 1938. His central but difficult Poet in New Yoik, incorporating an Ode to Walt Whitman privately published in 1933, first appeared in 1940; The House of Bemaida Alba, suppressed by his family, in 1945. In 1954 his family "rediscovered" the early but important drama The Butterfly's Evil Trick ("butterfly" is a Spanish slang term for homosexual). Only in 1974 was the long-unavailable Impressions and Land­scapes reprinted. The overtly pederastic and Pirandellian The Public was published from an incomplete draft MS, over his relatives' opposition, in 1976; the final text is still unavailable. (The play was very well received when premiered in Spain in 1987; its title has been borrowed for a major Spanish theatrical magazine.) The Sonnets of Dark Love were withheld by his family and published clandestinely in 1983. Important juvenilia are only slowly being made available, and of his extensive correspondence only that part without reference to sexual themes has been pub­lished.
Lorca was given to discussing works in advance of or during composi­tion. Among those he mentioned are The Destruction of Sodom, in which frustra­tion of homosexual desire causes incest, The Blackball, "the tragedy of a homosex­ual in conflict with society," and The Beautiful Beast, a treatment of zoophily. These exist only as tiny fragments or in the published recollections of his friends.
It is difficult and risky to outline Lorca's thought without full access to his works, but it is known in part. Central to his writings is the power, universality, and goodness of the sexual and reproductive instinct, and opposition to forces - espe­cially the Catholic church - which repress and frustrate it. In his plays, many of which have female protagonists, he treats the frustrated desire for offspring; a long reli­gious poem presents a beautiful crucified Christ as a figure of sexual liberation. A second current in his thought is the need for spiritual, cultural, and economic re­form of Spanish and world society. Finally, there is the theme of isolation and melan­choly. He explores poetically problems of self-acceptance and relating to a hostile world, the difficulty of transcending isola­tion through love, and a general existential and irresolvable anguish.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Paola Ambrosi and Maria Grazia Profeti, F. Garcia Lorca: La frustrazione erotica maschile, Rome: Bulzoni, 1979; Daniel Eisenberg, "Reaction to the Publication of the Sonetos del amor oscuro," Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 55 (1988), 261-71; Ian Gibson, Federico García Lorca: A Life, London: Faber, 1989; idem, "Lorca's 'Balada triste': Children's Songs and the Theme of Sexual Disharmony in Libro de poemas," Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 46 (1969), 21-38; Dennis Klein, "Así que pasen cinco años: A Search for Sexual Identity," Journal of Spanish Studies: Twentieth Century, 3 (1975), 115-23; Rafael Martínez Nadal, Federico García Lorca and "The Public," New York: Schocken, 1974; idem, Cuatro lecciones sobre Federico García Lorca, Madrid: Juan March-Cátedra, 1980; Ángel Sahuquillo, Federico García Lorca y la cultura de la homosexualidad, Stockholm: Akademitryck, 1986; Mario Socrate, "Studio critico" accompanying his translation of Sonetti dell'amore oscuro e altre poesie inedite, Milan: Garzanti, 1985, pp. 249-69; Joseph Velasco, "La poesía erótica del primer Lorca," Hommage á Jean-Louis Flecniakoska, Montpellier, 1980, II, 445-61; Luis Antonio de Villena, "La sensibilidad homoerótica en el Romancero gitano," Campus [Granada], December 1986, pp. 27-30.
Daniel Eisenberg

LOS Angeles
Today the Los Angeles metro­politan area is believed to be the twelfth most populous conurbation in the world. The growth leading to this concentration is the result of several factors, notably the mild Mediterranean climate, which at­tracted immigration as well as certain industries not dependent on proximity to raw materials, such as motion picture production and aircraft manufacture.
A number of elements account for the emergence of Los Angeles as one of the leading urban foci of a homophile subculture by the mid-twentieth century. The long stretches of fine beach on the Pacific Ocean, coupled with long summer seasons of good, sunny weather eventually incubated a subculture of bodybuilders and physique photographers that became well-known around the country. Another factor appears to have been a spinoff from the film industry: like the theatre from which it in part derived, Hollywood used the talents of costume and set designers, makeup artists, and hairdressers - all vo­cations in which the homophile is be­lieved to be represented in disproportion­ately high numbers. Another factor may have been religious diversity. Large num­bers of Christians affiliated with a great diversity of Protestant denominations, as well as a number of Jews, and some immi­grants from Asia who were adherents of Buddhism and other faiths, flocked to California in the latter half of the nine­teenth century. As a result, no one de­nomination established such a hegemony as to be able to dictate moral standards. While same-sex relations were generally anathema to the various denominations for many years, the foundation was laid for increasing tolerance on the part of several of them.
Los Angeles developed its port of San Pedro beginning at the turn of the century, and facilities for maritime com­merce emerged at the same time as those to serve the needs of the United States Navy. While many seafarers, whether civilian or military, sought out prostitutes or girlfriends during their time on shore, Los Angeles and its port district of San Pedro and maritime suburb, Long Beach, were no different from similarly situated communities in the development of op­portunities for same-sex encounters in­volving sailors.
Victorian and Pre-World War I Periods, 1848-1917. The annexation of California to the United States pursuant to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848 led to the formation of state government in 1849 and admission to the Union the following year. One of the first acts of the new State's Legislature was to pass "An Act Concerning Crimes and Punishments" on April 16,1850. Section 48 stated: "The infamous crime against nature, either with man or beast, shall subject the offender to be punished by imprisonment in the State Prison for a term not less than five years, and which may extend to life." This was derived from Field's Draft New York Penal Code. The 1880 Federal Census found three persons incarcerated in California for "crimes against nature." In an important case, People v. Boyle (1897), the Cahfornia Supreme Court held that a sexual assault in the "victim's" mouth was insufficient to support a conviction. In 1915 this per­ceived defect was remedied by criminal­izing fellatio and cunnilingus.
In 1914, the City of Long Beach, a Los Angeles suburb, hired undercover detectives who arrested over thirty men in the restrooms of the local plunge and else­where on "vagrancy" charges. This charge has been used in Cahfornia, since a 1903 amendment to the "vagrancy" law, to prosecute same-sex activity where actual intercourse sufficient for "crime against nature" could not be proven. Most inter­estingly, two defendants pled not guilty, obtained jury trials, and were acquitted after testimony suggested entrapment or even perjury on the part of the police. The Los Angeles Times editorialized against "sodomites," but showed startling famili­arity with the work of Edward Carpenter, mentioned historical figures such as Julius Caesar, King James I, and Oscar Wilde, and used the word "homosexuality" - possi­bly one of the earliest appearances of the term in the American mass media.
The World Wars and Interwar Period, 1917-1945. During the interwar period, same-sex cruising locales became clearly identified; the two best known in Los Angeles were Pershing Square, a park occupying a city block in the center of downtown Los Angeles, and Westlake Park (renamed General Douglas MacArthur Park during World War II), four to six times as large, a mile and a half to the west. These urban parks presented an ideal set­ting for casual pickups as well as prostitu­tion, same-sex and otherwise. Pershing Square, in particular, was conveniently located to bars and cheap hotels where management was not so choosy about their clientele, and homosexuals would be tol­erated when vice enforcement was not intense (by the thirties, the first identifiably "gay" bars can be noted). For the more affluent, one or more private clubs in Hollywood facilitated diverse sexual ac­tivity. Other venues for same-sex encoun­ters included the San Pedro and LongBeach entertainment districts which attracted sailors and those who were interested in meeting them. Both World Wars took men away from small towns to larger cities, such as Los Angeles, where social pres­sures to conform diminished and same-sex environments multiplied.
The Postwar Period, 1945-1969. The social turmoil resulting from World War II included the throwing together in same-sex environments of large numbers of servicemen and servicewomen, with the inevitable development of physical and emotional relations. Many who "came out" in this way during the war never returned to their home towns, but settled in large cities where they could live a life more compatible with their sexual orien­tation.
The late forties saw the first known lesbian periodical in America, Vice Versa, edited by "Lisa Ben," the pseudo­nym of Edyth Eyde. In 1950 and 1951, the Mattachine Society was organized in Los Angeles, the country's first large-scale homophile organization. It organized numerous discussion groups and struck a radical blow for civil rights in the spring of 1952 when it organized a legal defense for one of its members, Dale Jennings, who had been arrested by a vice officer for solicitation; Jennings got off. Internal poli­tics led to a reorganization of Mattachine in 1953; later, it was based in San Fran­cisco. Meanwhile, ONE, Inc. was founded in Los Angeles in late 1952, with a primary goal of publishing. ONE Magazine first appeared in January of 1953, and was the first successful American magazine by and for the homophile.
Gay bar life was facilitated by a Cahfornia Supreme Court decision estab­lishing the right of an establishment to operate, even if its clientele was predomi­nantly or even exclusively homosexual. Sex itself was legally anathema; "crime against nature" was punishable by one year to life in prison after 1952. Bath­houses catering to a gay trade were subject to harassment; an appellate decision of the mid-fifties upheld the Los Angeles Police Commission's closing of the Sultan Baths, a few doors from Pershing Square, citing numerous arrests and convictions of male patrons for sexual activity. During the sixties, organizing increased. The Council on Religion and the Homophile, opening lines of communication with religious leaders, presaged the later founding in the Los Angeles area of the Metropolitan Community Church and groups within existing religious denominations. The Ad­vocate began in 1967 as the newsletter of the Los Angeles homophile group, PRIDE.
After Stonewall. The period marked by the Stonewall Rebellion in New York was one of continued building on past activity in Los Angeles. A Gay Com­munity Services Center was organized. The Homophile Effort for Legal Protection was formed to help in the courts, and the California legislature legalized private, noncommercial, consensual sex between adults in 1975.
The seventies featured continued growth of traditional meeting places such as bars and baths, but opportunities for socializing in less sexually-charged con­texts also burgeoned, including groups formed to enable businesspeople, or members of specific professions or occu­pations to congregate. Athletic, sports, and musical organizations proliferated. These were national trends, but they manifested themselves in Los Angeles at least as early as anywhere else. Political organizations, Democratic, Republican, and nonpartisan, appeared. The eighties would become known as the decade of AIDS, and Los Angeles was not far behind New York and San Francisco in being a target of this disease. Community organizations were soon mounting a strong response to the challenge, however.
Scholarly pursuits were not ne­glected; ONE Institute celebrated thirty years of work on a 3 1/2-acre campus, granting the world's first Master's and Doctoral degrees in Homophile Studies.
David G. Cameron

LOUIS XIII (1601-1643)
King of France at the time of the Thirty Years War. The question has been argued whether or not Louis XHI was homosexual. He was, remarkably enough, the son of Henri IV, known as "le Vert-Galant" because of his passion fprwomen, and father of the equally heterosexual Louis XIV. Physically Louis was sickly and sub­ject to insomnia, in character he was sulky, fretful, selfish, and obdurate to the point of cruelty. His childhood environment was not one that would have turned him to­ward heterosexuality. His father and mother quarreled constantly. The spec­tacle of his father's unceasing debauchery, the presence of bastard half-brothers whom he hated, and their mothers - his father's former mistresses - combined with the heavy burden of power shared with an ambitious mother, Marie de Medicis, did not make for a model to emulate. As a consequence the child's sensibilities were repelled by the lasciviousness of the court, but at the age of ten he developed a pas­sionate attachment for a young nobleman, Charles d'Albert de Luynes, keeper of the king's hunting birds. Luynes was a hand­some man of twenty-three, virile and ath­letic, and the passionate attachment of the boy for an older servant was a classic homoerotic liaison which lasted for ten years and reached the point where the sovereign could make no decision without consulting his friend. The only unanswered question is whether the ambitious and self-centered Luynes took advantage of the king's affection.
An arranged dynastic marriage with the Spanish Infanta, Anne of Austria, was a matter of political expediency and of amorous failure: Luynes had to carry him against his will to the bridal chamber where he had to "force himself" twice, and for more than twenty years the marriage remained without issue - this at a time when contraceptive devices were uncom­mon. The celebrated Cardinal Richelieu, since 1623-24 the Prime Minister, under­stood h|s sovereign's character perfectly, as befitted a statesman of his caliber, and so favored the friendship that sprang up between Louis and Francois de Barradas, an equerry of the royal stables, stupid and otherwise meritless, but handsome, ath­letic, and virile. According to Tallement desRéaux, the king was accused of "count­less indecencies with him." After a break caused by the marriage of his favorite, the king found solace with Claude de Saint-Simon (father of the author of the Mem­oirs), and then in 1638, with an eighteen-year-old boy, Henri de Cinq-Mars, who within a few months rose from captain in the guards to Grand Master of the Ward­robe and Grand Equerry of France. For a time it was an idyllic love affair - but it proved one-sided, as Cinq-Mars saw in the king only a source of endless favors and gifts. So followed three years of jealous turmoil and heartbreak for Louis, which ended only when Cinq-Mars made the fatal error of plotting against Richelieu, who presented the monarch with written proof of his treason. Cinq-Mars was be­headed in September 1642 in the Place des Terreaux in Lyon. The king, neurasthenic and melancholy, lived but a year longer.
A puritan by natural rigidity and by the religious training which he received in the era of the Counterref ormation, Louis XHT was also homosexual, and his sexual orientation is the key to his character. His passionate submission to the virile Luynes was a prelude to the domination which Richelieu by other means was to exert over him. He had many effeminate traits: weakness of character, the need to be dominated, jealousy, and pettiness. His love for women was never attended by sexual desire, a circumstance that led to his being named "Louis the Chaste" - an example of what V. V. Rozanov called "the psychological 'I cannot' masquerading as the moral T will not.'" But if he lacked the qualities of a true head of state and a great king, Cardinal Richelieu made up for these failings in his role as Prime Minister, and controlling Louis XUI as he did, he used his position to bring France to the height of its power in European affairs under the Old Regime.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Marc Daniel, "A Study of Homosexuality in France during the Reigns of Louis XIII &. Louis XIV," One Institute Quarterly, 4/3 (1961), 77-93; A. Floyd Moote, Louis XIII, the fust, Berkeley: UC Press, 1989.
Warren Johansson

Love
Unstintingly, modern philoso­phers and novelists have analyzed love, while creators of high and popular art never tire in their celebration of it. It goes without saying that the bulk of these dis­cussions concern heterosexual love. Yet the ancient Greeks, from whom all our thinking in the matter ultimately derives, were as interested (if not more so) in homosexual love as in the heterosexual variety.
The Greek Contribution. The Greek language makes a sharp distinction between love as affection {phiha) and love as desire (eros). Philia is directed mainly toward family members and friends, while eros is the more intense form, which would include, in our terms, both romantic love and lust. Homer describes eros as a kind of appetite, to be assuaged in much the same manner as thirst and hunger are slaked by drinking and eating. Although this notion of love as appetite survives even today, most of those who have experienced love would be unwilling to leave the matter, there. Nor did the Greeks. The archaic lyric poets of the seventh and sixth centuries b.c., who were the first to por­tray subjective emotional life in all of its bittersweet intensity, presented a concept of love as a piercing experience that trans­formed the very core of one's being. As the Lesbian poet Sappho sang, "Some say that the most beautiful thing on the black earth is an army of horsemen, others an army of footsoldiers, others a fleet of ships; but I say it is the person you love." The poets understood that love could be a mania, depriving the lover of food and sleep and making him tear his hair and garments. In pederastic love a dynamic of reversal often occurred in which the superior partner, the eiastes, became the slave of his be­loved, the eromenos. Hence the theme of the tyranny of love. Pederasty also focused on love's transience, for the beloved speed­ily lost his attractiveness at the first growth of beard.
In the Symposium Plato presents the myth of human origins from double beings of which living men and women are but sundered halves. The longing to return to this primal unity is "the desire and pursuit of the whole." The ultimate im­possibility of this quest is an apt metaphor for the unrealizability of love's final goals. But human love may be the starting point for an intellectual and spiritual endeavor which carries us up through a "ladder of being" to the ultimate contemplation of the good. Plato's concept (which is not identical with the later notion of "Platonic love") is the starting point of the whole tradition of idealization in love. Although later commentators tend to gloss the matter over, it is clear that in his discussion of the wonders of eros Plato and his colleagues have in mind exclusively the love of boys.
Rome and the Middle Ages. Re­acting perhaps against Platonic idealiza­tion, the Roman poets Lucretius and Ovid advocated a down-to-earth concept of love as practical satisfaction. Lucretius saw human love as an extension of animal copulation, even of agricultural activity.
The writers of the New Testa­ment abhorred what they regarded as the excessively carnal concept of love among the Greeks and Romans, even preferring the vulgar word agape for divinely sanc­tioned love. Agape could not include homosexual love, which was henceforth to be outlawed. In any event, however, the new concept did not oust the Greco-Roman one, and the two competed in subsequent centuries. In medieval Europe the ancient concept, as transmitted by Ovid, enjoyed a revival, and this revival is one of the chief ingredients of the "courtly love" of the Provencal troubadours and those who came after them. A curious feature of the Prov­encal lyrics is the masculine form of ad­dress to the beloved - midons instead of madonna. If it is true that troubadour poetry was influenced by Moorish poetry from Spain, this address may be a relic of the conventions of the pederastic poetry that flourished in all the Islamic lands. There is also a considerable body of medie­val pederastic poetry in Latin, including debates as to the respective merits of male and female love objects.
The Renaissance and After. The Italian Renaissance, permeated with neo-Platonism and the revival of astrology, saw love as the product of cosmic forces. In human affairs its actions could be com­pared to magic and sorcery; hence the "Circean" concept of love as a matter of charms, spells, and enchantments. In Renaissance plays and epic poems (such as Ariosto's Orlando Furioso) cross-dressing scenes permitted some exploration of same-sex love.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, romantic poets and novelists saw love under the sign of illusion, but a fruitful illusion that brings the lover into contact with the infinite and transcenden­tal. In Freudian psychoanalysis the sense of illusion persists, but without the enno­bling idealization.
One of the most profound twenti­eth-century analysts of love was the French homosexual novelist Marcel Proust. Working his way through the still predominately negative concepts of homosexuality that he inherited, he saw much commonality between homosexual and heterosexual love. The imperfect match between the lover's concept of the love object and the actuality of him made for complexity, as did changes over time.
With the implementation of the "sexual revolution" in the 1970s romantic love seemed to take second place to lust, but the aids crisis has helped it to make a comeback. With the relentless propaga­tion of the common coin of love through the mass media, gay men and lesbians have inevitably internalized much of the sentimental lore of heterosexual love, so that there is now a genre of "romance" novels aimed specifically at this market. The popular psychologist Dorothy Tennov attempted to introduce a new term, limerence, but it is unclear that this word represents any conceptual advance; it is simply romantic love once again. Love, it seems, is a perennial theme, and one which retains much of its mystery intact.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Edith Fischer, Amor und Eros: Eine Untezsuchung des Woztfeldes "Liehe" im Lateinischen und Ghechischen, Hildesheim: H. A. Gerstenberg, 1973; David M. Halperin, "Platonic Eios and What Men Call Love," Ancient Philosophy, 5 (1985), 161-204; J. E. Rivers, Proust and the Art of Love, New York: Columbia University Press, 1980; Irving Singer, The Nature of Love, 3 vols., Chicago: Chicago Univer­sity Press, 1984-87.
Wayne R. Dynes

Lover
In today's homosexual usage the term "lover" designates one's long-term partner. If one is invited to a social event, it would seem reasonable to ask "May i bring my lover?" just as others would say "May I bring my spouse?" Some have objected to the word as placing too much emphasis on the sexual side. Interestingly, a similar problem of designation occurs among unmarried heterosexual couples who need a word to describe their opposite number in the dyad.
In former times heterosexuals recognized a pattern of relationship between lover and mistress for a bond not sanctioned by the law and without imply­ing absolute fidelity. Neither homosexu­als or lesbians ever seem to have adopted the word mistress, which has retained exclusively heterosexual connotations of amorous arrangements.
Dissatisfaction with the term lover in its current sense suggests several alternatives, but these seem scarcely happier. Fiance seems too old-fashioned/ and the implication that marriage will follow is not appropriate for gay men and lesbians. Paramour has acquired the nega­tive, judgmental connotation of a tempo­rary partner with purely physical inter­ests. An expression derived from sociology, significant other, seems too long and pre­tentious, while partner may imply a busi­ness relationship, or conversely, a chance participant in a one-night stand. Some have therefore proposed life partner, an expression now making its way into obitu­aries as they increasingly disregard the taboo on mentioning the survivor of a homosexual couple arrangement.
Latin recognized both amator, "lover, paramour, devoted friend," and amans, "loving one, sweatheart." In Eng­lish usage, French-derived amateur has become specialized in the sense of a lover of things [not persons), or a dilettante.

Lowell, Amy Lawrence (1874-1925)
American poet. Born into a dis­tinguished and wealthy family in Brookline, Massachusetts, Lowell was educated privately. For a brief period she was associated with Ezra Pound, but broke with him to go her own way. In fact her imagist poetry is quite different from that of Pound's circle.
Lowell described herself in her adolescent diary as "a great, rough, mascu­line, strong thing." Lacking beauty in her own perception, she confessed in that same diary that "I cannot help admireing [sic] and generally f ailing in love with, extreme beauty." Although she had very strong crushes on young males during that ado­lescent period, it was her crushes on her female friends that appear to have first led to her writing poetry; one of her earliest extant poems came out of her adolescent crush on her girlfriend, "Louly W."
Amy Lowell's first published vol­ume of poems, A Dome of Many Coloured Glass ¡1912), contains a number of seem­ingly homoerotic poems, addressed to two women. But the most significant body of her experiential love poems was written to and for the actress Ada Russell.
Amy Lowell first encountered Ada Russell in 1909 when the actress was trav­eling on a New England tour of Dawn of a Tomorrow. The two met again in Boston, in 1912, when Russell, playing the lead in The Deep Purple, appeared as a guest of honor at the Lunch Club, to which Lowell, then half-heartedly living the life of a Boston society woman, belonged. They spent part of the summer of 1912 together, and for the next two years the poet tried to convince the actress to live with her. This courtship is reflected in approximately 20 poems of Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914). Ada finally yielded to Amy's pur­suit in the spring of 1914. She quit the stage and went to live with the poet in her Brookline mansion, Sevenels, ostensibly as her paid companion, but in fact as her mate. The two lived together until Amy's death in 1925.
Several of Lowell's later volumes contain love poems about the relationship between the two women, such as Pictures of the Floating World (1919) and two post­humous volumes, What's O'Clock (1925) and Ballads for Sale (1927). The 43 poems in the "Two Speak Together" section of Pictures of a Floating World are the best and most complete record of the love rela­tionship between Amy Lowell and Ada Russell.
The usual critical observation that Lowell was overweight and unmarried, and that her work is a "knell of personal frustration ... an effort to hide the bare walls of the empty chambers of her heart ..." (Harvey Allen, Saturday Review of Literature, 1927) and the exposure of the heart of "a girlish, pathetic, and lonely woman, underneath [whose] . . . bump­tious manner lies disappointment" (Winfield Townley Scott, New England Quar­terly, 1935), is not borne out by the body of Lowell's poetry. The preponderance of her experiential poems suggest a life and a relationship that were extremely happy and productive. Typically, in "Thorn Pierce" Lowell talks about the world being dark and glazed, but another woman gives to her "fire,/And love to comfort, and speech to bind,/And the common things of morning and evening./And the light of your lantern." In "Christmas Eve" she tells the other woman, "You have lifted my eyes, and made me whole,/And given me purpose, and held me faced/ Toward the horizon you once had placed/ As my aim's grand measure." "A Decade," the poem that celebrates the first ten years of their acquaintance, concludes "I am com­pletely nourished." Lowell admitted to her acquaintances, such as John Living­ston Lowes, that such love poems were about Ada.
In a scurrilous study published one year after Amy Lowell's death, Clem­ent Wood argued that Lowell was not a good poet because many of her poems were homosexual; therefore, they did not "word a common cry of many hearts." Lowell, he concluded, may qualify "as an impassioned singer of her own desires; and she may well be laureate also of as many as stand beside her," but non-lesbian readers will find nothing in her verse [Amy Lowell, 1926).
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Lillian Faderman, "Warding off the Watch and Ward Society: Amy Lowell's Lesbian Poetry," Gay Books Bulletin, 1:2 (Spring 1979), 23-27; Amy Jean Gould, The World of Amy Lowell and the Imagist Movement, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1975.

Lucian (ca. a.d. 120-ca. 185)
Greek writer. From Samosata on the Euphrates, Lucian traveled widely as a tutor and professional lecturer, delivering set pieces in Greek, though his native tongue was Aramaic. He was surnamed "the blasphemer" according to Suda for telling absurd tales of the gods. At about the age of 40 he settled in Athens and gave up rhetoric to write philosophic Dialogues. Eventually, perhaps under Commodus, he became an imperial official in Egypt. He borrowed from Cynic wit, Menippean satire, mime, Old Attic Comedy, and (for his later Dialogues) from Plato. Practicing successively law, sculpture, and rhetoric, he exposed the charlatan in Alexander and the religious fanatic in Peregrinus, who becoming a Christian grew wealthy by donations from his duped coreligionists but abjured Christianity when he was re­leased from prison where he was confined for fraud and ended by immolating himself at the Olympic games. Anticipating the concerted attack that would be organized by later imperial families, he character­ized Christ as "that crucified sophist" and his followers as "unhappy men (who) have persuaded themselves that they will be immortal and live forever; wherefore they despise death and willingly sacrifice them­selves" [Peregrinus, 13).
His Life of Alexander of Abonuteichc ; satirized a Pythagorean divine who, having become rich and famous through fraud in middle age, kept a harem of pretty young priests. Bom about 105 in that Hellenized Black Sea port, Alexander, a tall, handsome, quick-witted youth, be­came the beloved of a quack physician from Tyana who had once followed Apol­lonius. Having learned and gotten all he could from the doctor, the unscrupulous youth joined an itinerant entertainer "practicing quackery and sorcery." He claimed descent from Perseus and mes­merized credulous audiences as a prophet of Asclepius, whose snakes, Alexander's pets, answered in verse questions submit­ted in writing for one drachma and two obols. Marcus Aurelius granted a new name to his native city (Ionopolis), which issued coins showing Alexander wearing his grandfather Asclepius' fillets.
Lucian questioned his contempo­raries' received beliefs and without great originality proffered sound comments on art, literature, and history. He satirized Zeus and Ganymede, poking gentle fun at the Greek gods' pederastic loves. In pam­phlets Lucian often accused even innocent men of homosexual acts, a tactic by his time standard in Greek (and Roman) ora­tory. Peregrinus, he charged, paid the poor parents of a.youth he had corrupted three thousand drachmae to escape being hauled before the governor of Asia.
The ironically entitled True His­tory is possibly the first gay science fiction. On a voyage into the Atlantic, the narrator is suddenly enveloped by a typhoon, which sweeps him up to the moon. Earth's satel­lite is inhabited by men only, and is en­gaged in a war with the sun. After distin­guishing himself in combat, the hero re­turns to the moon, where the king mag­nanimously gives him his son the prince in marriage. Since there are no women, male babies are born in two ways: by parturition from the thigh (presumably after having been inseminated anally) or by planting the left testicle in the ground, whereupon the child grows out of the ground as part of a plant. Shorn of its homoeroticism this romance inspired Swift's Gulliver's Trav­els, the fantasies of Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655), and many later European tales of interplanetary flight.
The romance Lucius, based on the work of Lucius of Patrae, may be among Lucian's authentic works, but rather ap­pears to be a gross summary of his elabora­tion of Lucius' work. On a visit to Thessaly, the protagonist witnesses the drug-induced transformation of his hostess into a bird. Taking a draught himself, he be­comes an ass and undergoes various sexual abuses, being buggered by a randy master and having to copulate interminably with a nymphomaniac. Lucian indicated that some Greeks abhorred lesbianism: "Citing monstrous instruments of lust . . . the tribade [lesbian] will become rampant" [Loves). Lucian attests to the widespread practice of pederasty in the Roman period, and also the range of public opinion on the subject.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. R. Bracht Branham, Unruly Eloquence: Lucian and the Comedy of Traditions, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.
William A. Percy

Ludwig II (1845-1886)
King of Bavaria during the period of German unification. Born at Nymphenburg Palace near Munich, he ascended the throne at the age of 18. In his early youth he was not only handsome but also intelligent and kind-hearted. The death of his father and his premature accession kept him from attending a university. One of his first acts was to invite the financially desperate Richard Wagner to Munich, promising him every favor, including the rebuilding of a theatre so that his operas could be performed. Despite opposition by officials and the public to the enormous sums that Ludwig devoted to the composer's projects, the king remained loyal to him throughout his life, support­ing the construction of the opera house in Bayreuth where Wagner at last saw all his work performed.
In the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 Bavaria unwisely sided with Catho­lic Austria and was easily defeated; the peace treaty served to make Bavaria de­pendent upon Prussia and ensured its involvement in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, which culminated in the crea­tion of the German Empire with Prussia at its head. Ludwig was pressured by Bis­marck to copy in his own hand a letter inviting the Prussian king to become emperor - an act which he himself regarded as disgraceful.
Toward women Ludwig was completely indifferent, and attempts to arrange a marriage for him came to naught. He had at least fleeting homosexual rela­tions with Paul of Thurn and Taxis, and a more enduring liaison with Richard Hornig, who exerted such influence over him that in official circles the favorite was called "the secret Chancellor of Bavaria." Their love had its crises, but at other times Hornig was the only one who had access to the king, and his decision to marry was experienced by Ludwig almost as treason. But the king found a successor, a certain Hesselschwerdt, who later, after his death, gave frank and revealing testimony to a secret committee of the Bavarian Parlia­ment: that Ludwig had a weakness for simple country boys, youths with muscu­lar arms and legs whom he could observe stripped to the waist while they tilled the fields. For men in uniform he had far less fondness and never cared to wear uniforms himself. When he had to appear in uni­form, he wore a fanciful adaptation of the costume of the uhlans that bordered on masquerade. Ludwig also had a love affair with a Viennese actor named Josef Kainz whom he watched perform as the sole member of the audience. But the actor had too great a need of a genuine public and tired of the liaison.
The psychological idiosyncrasies and peculiarities of the king gave rise to what Thomas Szasz has called "the first psychiatric assassination committed suc­cessfully and in broad daylight on an important peronality." In fact, the death of Ludwig U on the evening of June 13, 1886, is shrouded in mystery. His body was found floating on the surface of the Stamberger See along with the body of the psychiatrist Bemhard von Gudden, the Director of the Insane Asylum in Munich, who was part of a commission appointed to take, the king into custody when the lavish expen­ditures on his new castles became impos­sible for the state. The castles themselves were expressions of the royal fantasy, executed in a series of derivative styles anticipating the interior decoration that was later to be recognized as a homosexual specialty. The death of the king was com­memorated in literary works composed by nearly all of the great contemporary homo­sexual writers. As an eccentric on the throne, Ludwig of Bavaria was the last of the crowned monarchs who - untroubled by regard for "public opinion" or the prying and insinuation of the media - could freely indulge their homoerot ic and other whims.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Curt Riess, Auch Du, Cäsar. .. Homosexualität als Schicksal, Munich: Universitas Verlag, 1981; Louis II de Bavière, Carnets secrets 1869-1886, Préface de Dominique Fernandez, Paris: Grasset, 1987;Wolfgang Schmidbauer and Johannes Kemper, Ein ewiges Rätsel will ich bleiben mir und anderen: wie krank war Ludwig II. wirklich2., Munich: Bertelsmann, 1986.
Warren Johansson

Lully, Jean-Baptiste (1632-1687)
French operatic composer. Bom in Florence, he originally had the name Giovanni Battista Lulli. A self-taught vio­linist, he went to France in 1648 and four years later entered the service of the young Louis XTV. He became chamber composer and conductor of one of the king's orches­tras. Until 1672 he composed numerous ballets, then he obtained a patent for the production of opera and established the Académie Royale de Musique, where he enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the oper­atic stage. Through lucky, sometimes unscrupulous speculations he amassed a fortune from his opera productions. By adapting the Italian opera to French taste, he set the style for French opera down to the late eighteenth century.
Among his contemporaries Lully inspired as much hatred as admiration. The hallmark of his character was impu­dence, which went so far as to submit to the king and queen of France a marriage contract in which he styled himself "son of a Florentine gentleman," when his fa­ther was still living as a humble miller. Thanks to his powerful protectors and to the King, who closed his eyes to the composer's conduct, Lully could enjoy relative immunity from the legal conse­quences of his scandalous behavior, which in the late seventeenth century could still be punished by death at the stake. He seems to have been homosexual through­out his life, even though when compro­mised in 1661 he chose to marry, and for a decade behaved like a model husband of the epoch, siring a child each year by his wife and otherwise living like an "honest bourgeois of Paris."
Yet on becoming director of the Opera in 1672, he abandoned himself en­tirely to his homosexual inclinations. His reputation was so well established that his enemies lost no occasion to castigate him in malicious verses that circulated in manuscript. A document of 1676 written by one Henri Guichard, whom Lully had accused of trying to poison him, referred explicitly to his "infamous debauches and acts of libertinism" with which, however, he did not "wish to soil the ears of the magistrates." The fiasco of a fireworks display that Lully had arranged in 1674 provoked the sarcastic comment that he might soon be on a pyre in the Place de Gréve, the locale where sodomites were burned at the stake. Once again Lully erected a facade of heterosexuality by taking as mistress one Mademoiselle Certain, a talented harpsichordist. How­ever, the affair ended badly for him when in 1684 he fell in love with a page named Brunei and was not ashamed to expose the liaison to the eyes of his wife and children, and out of jealousy Mile Certain denounced him to Louis XIV. His anger provoked, the king had the page arrested, imprisoned at Saint-Lazare and given a good flogging, in the course of which he allegedly denounced several great nobles of the Court. Lully received a formal reproof from the Mar­quis de Seignelay and was warned that if he ever reverted to such practices, the king would make a striking example of him. This episode too gave rise to burlesque verses satirizing the composer's fall from grace, but by June of 1685 he regained the royal favor, and once more threw his de­tractors off the scent by pursuing an affair with a noble widow, the Duchess de la Ferté. At the same time, however, he re­sumed his homosexual adventures, now in a manner that brought him to the con­sulting room of Dr. Jeannot, a specialist in venereal diseases. It is possible that his mysterious death in consequence of a minor wound on his foot that became infected and gangrened, despite the best efforts of the physicians, had this as its cause. Beyond a doubt, the life of dissipa­tion which Lully had led hastened his end. His death was hailed with an outcry of joy by his enemies, and a controversy ensued between them and his admirers who de­fended his homosexual passion on the ground that it had been shared by "the greatest heroes and noblemen."
Even with his failings, Lully was a composer whose genius was acknowl­edged by all his contemporaries, friend and foe alike. His homosexual escapades re­veal him as a man of intense sensuality who enjoyed life to the fullest and boldly took risks in his ceaseless search for pleas­ure.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Henry Pruniéres, "La vie scandaleuse de Jean-Baptiste Lully," Mezcure de Prance, 115 (May 1, 1916), 75-88.
Warren Johansson

Lynes, George Platt (1907-1955)
American photographer. One of the more significant figures in American photography between 1930 and 1955, Lynes was born in East Orange, New Jersey, and educated in private schools. He visited Paris in 1925, the first of several summers he spent there. In Paris he was assocated with Andre Gide, Pavel Tchelitchew, Jean Cocteau, and Gertrude Stein, the last two of whom were subjects for early portraits. He began to teach himself photography in 1927. In 1933 Lynes decided he had enough mastery to begin a new career, and opened a commercial studio in New York. He rap­idly became a successful fashion photogra­pher, contributing to Harper's Bazaar and Vogue.
In 1935 he was commissioned to record the work of the American Ballet, which he continued to do until his death, compiling a noted body of dance photogra­phy. Despite his prominence, in 1945 he closed his studio and moved to California; three years later he returned to New York, but was unable to repeat his earlier suc­cess. Declared bankrupt in 1951, he spent the four years before his death from cancer in obscurity.
Lynes was closely associated with such homosexual artists as Marsden Hartley (with whom he shared a studio in the 1940s), the circle around Paul Cadmus and Jared French (both of whom he photo­graphed), the American homoerotic artist Neel Bates, and British photographer Cecil Beaton.
His work is an important expres­sion of two artistic currents of his day. In the 1920s, photography turned away from thepictoralists' soft-focus aesthetic; Lynes' male nudes present the reality of men's bodies for our precise observation, almost as objects of reverence. In Paris he was influenced by Tchelitchew, Man Ray, and surrealism; his "mythological" subjects employ its concepts. All of his work shows a sense of theatrical staging and dramatic effects achieved by his use of lighting.
While his mythological works - safe because their ostensible subject was myth, not men - and some of his dance photographs are strongly homoerotic, Lynes felt he could not openly express his homosexuality in his art without threat­ening his career. He did, however, circu­late overtly homoerotic photographs among his friends, and between 1951 and his death he published homoerotic images under the pseudonym Roberto Rolf and Robert Orville in the Swiss homophile journal Der Kreis. The conflict he felt is illuminated by the fact that, before his death, he destroyed two bodies of work in his archives: his nudes and explicitly sex­ual images, and his fashion work.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. George Platt Lynes: Photographs 1931-1955, Pasadena, CA: Twelvetrees Press, 1980.
Donald Mader