![]() Frankly relating the virulent homophobia of western society and its dire consequences to the Hebrew Scriptures and early Church history (a move to which I shall return), Crompton argues that "from the very birth of Christianity, a hatred existed fully comparable to the hatred directed at pagans and Jews in the first millennium and at heretics, Jews, and witches in the first seven centuries of the second" (xi). ![]() ![]() On a fundamental level, the ampersand of the title points to the bitter irony that those who practice same-sex relations have often been excluded from "civilization" in the Christian West. Reflecting on the title of Louis Crompton's magisterial Homosexuality & Civilization, one might see that this is an artful and well-planned work of scholarship, for its multiple ironies sum up many of the themes and polemical issues pertinent to the book. ![]() Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003. ![]()
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