Rating: 
Summary: Unfortunately, Gagnon's work is far from complete
Review: While Robert Gagnon's work covers much ground, he, like other conservative religious authors, still fails to address the question of intersexed persons, persons whose genital and/or chromosomal structures do not fit our culture's "neat" definition of female and male. He argues that nature provides the proof that male/female pairings were God's intention, but does not address how sexuality works for persons whose "God-given" body does not provide a complementary match. Should these persons also be banned from sexual activity because their bodies do not "fit?"Gagnon also insists that same-sex "relationships" are unknown in the animal world, an idea that Bruce Bagemihl destroys in his exhaustive work, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. The Bible is far from being univocal in support of monogamous, heterosexual marriage as the only proper outlet for sexuality. Polygyny is clearly the "norm" presented in Hebrew scripture with monogamy only coming into focus near the approach of the common era. If Adam and Eve were the exemplars, why is that other authors of scripture did not see fit to mention them as such? I have other problems with some of his assertions about biblical passages, but there is not enough space in this review to adequately address the issues. Gagnon has certainly provided a major work on conservative thought about same-sex issues, but many of his arguments are severely weakened by his failure to engage the subject of intersexed persons. He further weakens his work by utilizing so-called research from groups who have no credibility within the scientific community. The real issue behind conservative religious arguments against same-sex orientation seems to be the desire to protect rigid gender boundaries. There is a desire for the sexes to be polar opposites, but instead, sex/gender exists along a continuum, thereby introducing an ambiguity that conservative religious writers hope to ignore. Anne Fausto-Sterling's work offers compelling evidence of our society's need for these rigid boundaries in articles like "The Five Sexes." Intersexed persons may make up 2 to 4% of the population.
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