Volume II Number 3
November 3, 1995

What Did They Say About Gays? Allan Gould. Toronto: ECW Press, 1995. 180pp, paper, $16.95. ISBN 1-55022-235-X. CIP. Grade 10 - 13 / Ages 14 - Adult. Review by Ted Monkhouse.

excerpt:

``I come to this book because of my Jewishness, and, not unrelatedly, because of my lifelong involvement in civil rights for blacks. Those three groups, of course, have very much in common: biblical threats and rejection, historical mockery and hatred, long struggles for civil and legal rights, revulsion by society, stonings, lynchings, even murder. . . . There are some real shockers in this book, at least to this sympathetic heterosexual. . . . In anthologizing and editing a book like this, one must have guidelines, and I choose to follow two. First, few, if any, writings from fiction; and second, and most important, no comments from homosexuals."

This is Gould's twenty-second book, and one of several anthologies he has edited. Gould is a literary scholar (PhD, York University; MA, New York University) who has gathered what over a hundred scholars, philosophers, scientists, organizations, religions, and poets said and wrote about homosexuality and homosexual men. So it is a learned, yet entertaining work; balanced in viewpoint and encompassing in scope.