By contrast, Jewish religious leaders in the sixth century B.C.E. branded male homosexuality as a capital offense and, later, blamed it for the destruction of the biblical city of Sodom. When these two traditions collided in Christian Rome during the late empire, the tragic repercussions were felt throughout Europe and the New World.Louis Crompton traces Church-inspired mutilation, torture, and burning of "sodomites" in sixth-century Byzantium, medieval France, Renaissance Italy, and in Spain under the Inquisition. But Protestant authorities were equally committed to the execution of homosexuals in the Netherlands, Calvin's Geneva, and Georgian England. The root cause was religious superstition, abetted by political ambition and sheer greed. Yet from this cauldron of fears and desires, homoerotic themes surfaced in the art of the Renaissance masters--Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Sodoma, Cellini, and Caravaggio--often intertwined with Christian motifs. Homosexuality also flourished in the court intrigues of Henry III of France, Queen Christina of Sweden, James I and William III of England, Queen Anne, and Frederick the Great.Anti-homosexual atrocities committed in the West contrast starkly with the more tolerant traditions of pre-modern China and Japan, as revealed in poetry, fiction, and art and in the lives of emperors, shoguns, Buddhist priests, scholars, and actors. In the samurai tradition of Japan, Crompton makes clear, the celebration of same-sex love rivaled that of ancient Greece.Sweeping in scope, elegantly crafted, and lavishly illustrated, "Homosexuality and Civilization" is a stunning exploration of a rich and terrible past.

    Coming at the controversial subject of transsexualism from several angles–historical, sociological, psychological, medical–Rudacille discovered that gender variance is anything but new, that changing one’s gender has been met with both acceptance and hostility through the years, and that gender identity, like sexual orientation, appears to be inborn, not learned, though in some people the sex of the body does not match the sex of the brain. Informed not only by meticulous research, but also by the author’s interviews with prominent members of the transgender community, The Riddle of Gender is a sympathetic and wise look at a sexual revolution that calls into question many of our most deeply held assumptions about what it means to be a man, a woman, and a human being.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    Today, many BDSM and leather practitioners are discovering the potential of these practices to reach personal, interpersonal, and spiritual goals.With trademark frankness and humor, these popular BDSM/sexuality authors document their journey into the realm of transcendent kink and radical ecstasy. Here, they share techniques that join BDSM with tantric sex practices to create a state of transcendence during sexual practice.

    Al-Qur'an - The Miracle of Miracles is a brief exposition of the Text, Scope, Infallibility and Authenticity of the Last Testament, Al-Qur'an.Read online free at http://www.ahmed-deedat.co.za/Books/B...

    This book describes the early Christians and their preoccupations. It follows the reflection and controversy these notions generated among Christian writers. It is intended for classicists and medievalists.

    Updated with the latest advances in the field, Jerry FitzGerald and Alan Dennis' 10th Edition of Business Data Communications and Networking continues to provide the fundamental concepts and cutting-edge coverage applications that students need to succeed in this fast-moving field.Authors FitzGerald and Dennis have developed a foundation and balanced presentation from which new technologies and applications can be easily understood, evaluated, and compared.

    The new edition of this leading gives students an understanding and appreciation of different cultures and helps them develop practical skills for improving their communication with people from other cultures. It's renowned for being the only text on the market to consistently emphasize religion and history as key variables in intercultural communication. Packed with the latest research and filled with numerous, compelling examples that force students to examine their own assumptions and cultural biases, this book helps students understand the subtle and profound ways culture affects communication. The book is divided into four interrelated parts: Part I introduces the study of communication and culture; Part II focuses on the ability of culture to shape and modify our view of reality; Part III puts the theory of intercultural communication into practice; and Part IV converts knowledge into action.

    Written in a concise, bulleted outline format, this well-illustrated text offers 500 USMLE-style review questions, answers, and explanations and features comprehensive content and upgraded USMLE Step 1 information.

    This 4th Edition contains full-color illustrations from Netter's Atlas of Human Anatomy, 6th Edition paired with concise text identifying those structures and reviewing relevant anatomical information and clinical correlations. Online access at studentconsult lets you review anatomy from any computer, plus additional "bonus" cards and over 300 multiple-choice questions.A perfect study aid and complement to Netter's Clinical Anatomy, 3rd Edition?concise text and the Netter/Atlas of Human Anatomy, 6th Edition.Netter. It's how you know.

    Sambia boys experience ritualized homosexuality before puberty and do not leave it until marriage, after which homosexual activity is prohibited. The implications are developed cross-culturally and contextualized in gender literature.

    Integrating literature with philosophy in an innovative way, editor Louis P. Pojman uses literary works to enliven and make concrete the ethical theory or applied issues addressed in each chapter. Literary works by Camus, Hawthorne, Hugo, Huxley, Ibsen, Le Guin, Melville, Orwell, Styron, Tolstoy, and many others lead students into philosophical concepts and issues such as relativism; utilitarianism; virtue ethics; the meaning of life; freedom; sex, love, and marriage; and environmental ethics. Once introduced, these topics are developed further through readings by philosophers including Aristotle, Jane English, Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Jean-Paul Sartre, and Bernard Williams. This unique anthology emphasizes the personal dimension of ethics, which is often ignored or minimized in ethics texts. The second edition offers several new selections including work by Maya Angelou, Kevin Bales, John Benson, Susan Glaspell, C. S. Lewis, R. M. MacIver, Plato, Plutarch, James Rachels, Ayn Rand, Voltaire, and Kurt Vonnegut. It also adds a new chapter on justice and the threat of terrorism featuring material from the Old Testament--in which the equivalent of a jihad occurs--followed by philosophical analyses by Martha Nussbaum and Louis P. Pojman. Featuring expanded part and chapter introductions as well as biographical sketches, abstracts, and study questions for each reading selection, The Moral Life, 2/e, is ideal for introductory ethics courses. It also provides an engaging gateway into personal and social ethics for the general reader.

    Her daughter, Carly, enthusiastically witnesses the change in her mother. But then a few months into their relationship, Dana tells Allison his secret: he has always been certain that he is a woman born into the wrong skin, and soon he will have a sex-change operation. Allison, is overwhelmed by the depth of her passion, and finds herself unable to leave Dana. By deciding to stay, she finds she must confront questions most people never even consider. Not only will her own life and Carly’s be irrevocably changed, she will have to contend with the outrage of a small Vermont community and come to terms with her lover’s new body–hoping against hope that her love will transcend the physical.

    Readers profit from its verbal-conceptual exposition and frequent use of examples.The applied emphasis provides clear illustrations of the principles and provides worked examples of the types of applications that are possible. Researchers learn how to specify regression models that directly address their research questions. An overview of the fundamental ideas of multiple regression and a review of bivariate correlation and regression and other elementary statistical concepts provide a strong foundation for understanding the rest of the text. The third edition features an increased emphasis on graphics and the use of confidence intervals and effect size measures, and an accompanying website with data for most of the numerical examples along with the computer code for SPSS, SAS, and SYSTAT, at www.psypress.com/9780805822236 .Applied Multiple Regression serves as both a textbook for graduate students and as a reference tool for researchers in psychology, education, health sciences, communications, business, sociology, political science, anthropology, and economics. An introductory knowledge of statistics is required. Self-standing chapters minimize the need for researchers to refer to previous chapters.

    Clerics denounce it as a heinous sin, while newspapers write cryptically of "shameful acts." Although many parts of the world now accept sexual diversity, the Middle East is moving in the opposite direction. In this absorbing account, journalist Brian Whitaker calls attention to the voices of men and women who are struggling with gay identities in societies where they are marginalized and persecuted by the authorities. He paints a disturbing picture of people who live secretive, fearful lives and who are often jailed, beaten, and ostracized by their families, or sent to be "cured" by psychiatrists.Whitaker's exploration of changing sexual behavior in the Arab world reveals that—while deeply repressive prejudices and stereotypes still govern much thinking about homosexuality—there are pockets of change and tolerance. The author combines personal accounts from individuals in the region with a look at recent Arab films and novels featuring gay characters and conducts a sensitive comparative reading of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic strictures around sexuality. Deeply informed and engagingly written, Unspeakable Love draws long overdue attention to a crucial subject.Copub: Saqi Books Brian Whitaker was Middle East editor at the Guardian for seven years and then an editor for the newspaper’s Comment is Free website. He is the author of What’s Really Wrong with the Middle East (Saqi Books, 2009). His website, www.al-bab.com, is devoted to Arab culture and politics. Unspeakable Love was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award in 2006.

    Masturbation may be the last taboo. But this is not a holdover from a more benighted age. The ancient world cared little about the subject; it was a backwater of Jewish and Christian teaching about sexuality. In fact, solitary sex as a serious moral issue can be dated with a precision rare in cultural history; Laqueur identifies it with the publication of the anonymous tract Onania in about 1722. Masturbation is a creation of the Enlightenment, of some of its most important figures, and of the most profound changes it unleashed. It is modern. It worried at first not conservatives, but progressives. It was the first truly democratic sexuality that could be of ethical interest for women as much as for men, for boys and girls as much as for their elders.The book's range is vast. It begins with the prehistory of solitary sex in the Bible and ends with third-wave feminism, conceptual artists, and the Web. It explains how and why this humble and once obscure means of sexual gratification became the evil twin -- or the perfect instance -- of the great virtues of modern humanity and commercial society: individual moral autonomy and privacy, creativity and the imagination, abundance and desire.