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Rating: 
Summary: excellent ethnographic and theological source
Review: GAYS, LESBIANS and FAMILY VALUES offers a very fresh and bold approach to the "family values" dilemma posed by the religious right. The authors, instead of miring themselves in the traditional approach to fighting the right - which has been to try and "fight back" by re-interpreting the Bible as not exactly homophobic, etc. - go out and interview gay and lesbian families and combine that research with a renewed hermeneutics. This, to put it simply - works. Because their examples draw on research within the commuunity, and across a broad spectrum of the community - the reason for their focus groups - the authors have created a document that allows instructors to walk through the arguments of the religious right step by step. How does an instructor address the following - Do gays and lesbians make good parents? Have good families? Should they get married? If these are the arguments of the religious right - are they born out by ethnographic field work? This book takes the religious arguments out of the merely theological realm and into a realm that students can understand and then evaluate on their own. The last third of the book as I stated earlier is a renewed look at a, what I would call, theology of corporeality, interpreting the words of Jesus, as meant particularly perhaps for a people who celebrate the corporeal - in this case, gays and lesbians. It is a well-earned hermeneutics and makes sense. It also teaches students how to think theologically and understand theological anthropology, as it comes at the end of, and is based on, their ethnographic study. I have used this book in classes and have found it very useful in teaching students about ethnography, theology, corporeality and transcendence and issues of embodiment. It also provides a useful tool in the study of gay and lesbian families. I applaud the authors' work. It really is a landmark volume and I look forward to more work from this team of authors which addresses these very serious issues, especially as the country and our students must grapple with the issue of gay and lesbian marriage. It is crucial at this time that we unpack what "family values" actually means, and how they are actually enacted within homosexual families.
Rating:
Summary: excellent ethnographic and theological source
Review: GAYS, LESBIANS and FAMILY VALUES offers a very fresh and bold approach to the "family values" dilemma posed by the religious right. The authors, instead of miring themselves in the traditional approach to fighting the right - which has been to try and "fight back" by re-interpreting the Bible as not exactly homophobic, etc. - go out and interview gay and lesbian families and combine that research with a renewed hermeneutics. This, to put it simply - works. Because their examples draw on research within the commuunity, and across a broad spectrum of the community - the reason for their focus groups - the authors have created a document that allows instructors to walk through the arguments of the religious right step by step. How does an instructor address the following - Do gays and lesbians make good parents? Have good families? Should they get married? If these are the arguments of the religious right - are they born out by ethnographic field work? This book takes the religious arguments out of the merely theological realm and into a realm that students can understand and then evaluate on their own. The last third of the book as I stated earlier is a renewed look at a, what I would call, theology of corporeality, interpreting the words of Jesus, as meant particularly perhaps for a people who celebrate the corporeal - in this case, gays and lesbians. It is a well-earned hermeneutics and makes sense. It also teaches students how to think theologically and understand theological anthropology, as it comes at the end of, and is based on, their ethnographic study. I have used this book in classes and have found it very useful in teaching students about ethnography, theology, corporeality and transcendence and issues of embodiment. It also provides a useful tool in the study of gay and lesbian families. I applaud the authors' work. It really is a landmark volume and I look forward to more work from this team of authors which addresses these very serious issues, especially as the country and our students must grapple with the issue of gay and lesbian marriage. It is crucial at this time that we unpack what "family values" actually means, and how they are actually enacted within homosexual families.
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