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Comments on physician Robert L. Spitzer's research about the effectiveness of reparative therapy in changing sexual orientation. Consequences of the social stigma; Homophobic attitudes; Aspect of behavioral responsiveness; Demedicalization of homosexuality; Concept of reparative therapy.

John Gagnon and William Simon's Sexual Conduct was first published in 1973; a paperback edition was published in 1974. It has been a highly influential study on the sociological aspects of sexuality — in many ways the fons et origo of the social constructionist approach, and the foundational text to view sexuality as scripted. Two essays are provided by the original authors in this 25th Anniversary Retrospective. Gagnon locates the work in place, career and history; Simon identifies the book as a 'prematurely postmodern' study engaged in an antiessentialist formulation for approaching sexualities. Both writers pay homage to the influence of Kenneth Burke on their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the prevalence rate of social distribution and AIDS related risk behavior of men who have sex with men in the United States. The findings reveal that the prevalence of bisexual men who reported unsafe sex with men and women is relatively small. This also is reflected in the fact that reported cases of AIDS attributed to bisexual contact continue to be infrequent and have remained stable over the past few years. For example, AIDS cases among heterosexual women attributed to male bisexual partners was 7.5% in 1991 and 6.8% in 1994. These may be underestimates, as not all women may know or be willing to admit if a sexual partner was bisexual. Bisexuality may be more important as a potential route of HIV transmission to the female partners of ethnic minority men compared to female partners of White men because bisexuality, at least in large urban settings, is more common among minority men. The greater prevalence of bisexual behavior among minority men may be due, in part, to the social pressures in minority communities for men to have female partners.

This paper replicates and extends an earlier attempt to use data from the General Social Survey (GSS) to track the distribution of AIDS across demographic subgroups. (The GSS asks respondents whether they know a person with AIDS [PWA].) The gender, racial, age, and regional composition of the set of PWAs reported by GSS respondents is compared with that of the official AIDS cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). In an attempt to assess the accuracy of the GSS estimates, a similar analysis is performed in which GSS respondents are asked whether they know a homicide victim. Data from four consecutive GSS samples (1988, 1989, 1990, and 1991) are used, permitting a more detailed exploration of potential biases and problems with the network technique. In addition, time series data from the National Health Interview Survey on the percentage of people who know at least one PWA are used to validate the GSS data. Our earlier findings, that the GSS identifies proportionately more White and midwestern cases than are reported to the CDC, are corroborated by the additional data. Possible explanations for these discrepancies are given, and suggestions are made for improving the utility of the approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International travel and travelers have infrequently been topics of research by sociologists, perhaps because they have been viewed as nonserious and potentially corrupting. However, travel and travelers share many similarities with other forms of human movement, such as migration and social mobility, particularly those relating to identity management in unfamiliar environments. Travelers must deal with stressful complexities at the personal, social, and cultural levels, the solutions to which reflect on the travelers' sense of mastery and competence. The environments into which the traveler as a voluntary stranger ventures differ in their dimensions of unfamiliarity, providing occasions for both personal triumph and failure. Travelers with varying levels of travel experience and social background characteristics use different "environmental bubbles" in which to travel, bubbles that aid in managing unfamiliarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major deficiency in the limited available literature on the female homosexual has been its use of a deviant sexual commitment as a primary explanatory variable. The present paper reexamines selected aspects of both the sexual and non-sexual adaptations of lesbians in terms of general female patterns. Within the limits set by a deviant gender preference, much of the behavior of the lesbian can be explained in terms of non-deviant sex role expectations. The analysis points to the need to consider the lesbian, as well as other deviant actors, in terms not only of the degree of failure of conventional socialization, but also the degree of success of conventional socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses sex offenses and child victims. Of all the obscurities in the field of criminology, the study of the victim of the criminal offense offers one of the murkiest prospects. The obscurity is compounded of two major elements, one connected to the operating definitional processes of the traditional criminal legal system and the other to the logistical consequences of this system. The processes of criminal justice require, for the kind of social sorting in which they result, art allocation of responsibility to one or another of the actors who are involved in an offense. The simplicity of the role systems that are provided and the motivational theories that underpin the criminal law are premised on a relatively simple set of casual relations between actors that can be organized through the adversary proceeding. The system then imposes on the socially and psychologically complex set of relationships between two actors the role of defendant or criminal for one and the role of plaintiff or victim for the other.

Homosexuality, as well as other forms of social or sexual deviance, has tended to require special conceptual approaches, approaches that all too often treat non-deviant forms of behavior (e.g., heterosexuality, noncriminal behavior, nonsuicidal behavior, etc.), as unexplained residual categories. The failure to link deviant and non-deviant behaviors or roles has produced a literature that grossly exaggerates the deviant component in behavior and role management. Often the deviant is located in a social landscape that has been stripped of everything but his deviant commitment. The present paper considers the homosexual within the conceptual framework of general developmental processes; it approaches homosexuality as a heterogeneous category, indicating the diversity of homosexual and non-sexual roles the homosexual may play, the significance of transitions associated with life-cycle changes, and, reversing the typical approach, takes into consideration the way in which non-sexual roles and commitments influence sexual roles and commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The images of Holden Caulfield and poor Ben jamin the Graduate have become commonplace. So has the discovery of Claude Brown. Perhaps what is missing is a portrait of Studs Lonigan, a Studs frustrated, however, not by a depression but by the more ambiguous context of an afflu ent society." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Presents obituaries for Marie Mironovna Beershtain/Mary M. Birshtein, a contributor in the field of social science simulation and modeling.