ABSTRACT
In all societies there are laws and rules to obey, and their violation may be punished—death—when the majority feels that the social order are sufficiently threatened. Sexuality is always a part of this order, and it is subject to many social controls, being close to marriage and reproduction and often regarded by religion as a sacred core of morality. Indeed, it is this individual-against-society dilemma that dominates the history of homosexuality in the western tradition and is common to the problems of understanding gays and lesbians across cultures. One of the great problems of sexual study, particularly of homosexuality, is how many cultures simply lack categories or general concepts that cover the meanings of the contemporary notion of homosexual. A growing body of cross-cultural work—primarily historical, anthropological, and sociological—has altered the shape of our understanding of homosexuality, suggesting new theoretical ideas and empirical analyses of same-sex meanings across time and space.
