ABSTRACT
Sex provides the juiciest gossip. Sociologists discuss sexual deviance as deviance because such behavior tends to be discrediting and stigmatizing; it is important to most people. Sexual behavior generally and sexual deviance more specifically are expressions or manifestations of the roles of men and women. Positivism or the application of the strict scientific method to the social world is related to a perspective that, in philosophy, is referred to as 'essentialism'. Constructionists argue that sexuality is in the service of the social world. In 1973, the membership of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) voted to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders a close vote and a controversial position at the time, but it represented the tocsin of changes to come. In many respects, homosexuality is 'departing from deviance'. A central feature in the psychiatrist's and the psychologist's conception of sexual deviance is dysfunction or disorder an undesirable condition in need of treating or curing.
