ABSTRACT
The chapters that constitute Sexual Conduct were first written as independent essays for publication, usually after being presented before various audiences for various purposes. This chapter argues that the question of the etiological origins of homosexuality was a remarkably unrewarding intellectual task given the cultural and historical character of eroticized same-gender relationships. Sexual Conduct was meant to challenge this "orthodoxy" and hopefully, in the Burkean tradition, to resist future orthodoxies. By entering the gay male and lesbian communities young people were embarking on a metaphorical career that would not only shape their interpersonal sexual lives, but their identities as well. The ambition to make "sex" social, to offer an understanding of the sexual that did not rest on individual biology or psychology, was a fusing of personal and disciplinary ambitions. The idea was that humans were cultural historical creatures between which there were vast discontinuities in social practice and mental life.
