The sociological study of homosexuality does not have a long history. Until about thirty years ago, it was believed that medicine, psychiatry, and psychology were responsible for this phenomenon. Throughout such literature, the understanding of homosexuality as something pathological or, at best, abnormal, was consistently emphasized. Even where the "health" condition, which serves as a standard, is not explicitly defined, there is an implicit assumption that it can be objectively determined and is not controversial.

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The establishment of a distinctly sociological perspective on homosexuality has always been associated with a departure from the pathological model, although this connection is not logically necessary. Various factors contributed to shaping the sociological view, primarily: the accumulation of anthropological data on the range of cultural variations in normative regulation of sexuality, gay politics, the emergence and strengthening of the gay liberation movement, which shifted the entire issue to another field - human and civil rights, and finally, internal scientific development - both generally (anti-positivist philosophy of science that delegitimized scientistic demands) and within sociology itself. Regarding the latter, assumptions for the sociology of homosexuality were created with the articulation of symbolic interactionism, more precisely, labeling theory as a specific application of this approach to the sociology of deviations. The labeling theory revolutionized this field, which had hitherto been called "social pathology." The change in the name of the discipline reflects a paradigm shift: while the use of the term "pathology" obviously relies on an analogy with medicine, where it is generally clear what is "healthy" and what is "sick," when something is called a "deviation," it is only claimed that the phenomenon in question deviates from something. And the norm from which it deviates, thanks to interactionism, becomes interesting as a phenomenon in itself, which will be discussed later.

Sociological study of social deviations, including homosexuality, besides its independent significance, is important as a contribution to the corpus of general sociological knowledge about a given society. Deviance, the way it is defined, and society's "defense" against it, are important factors in the integration of society as a moral community: "Affirmation of a moral principle necessarily sets boundaries for correct behavior and leads to the stigmatization of actions that lie beyond that boundary as immoral... The social meaning of either deviance (immorality) or decency (morality) can be adequately understood only if placed in relation to the other, to its opposite" (Rock, 1973: 53-54). Thus, deviation always leads us back to the norm against which it is measured. In the case of homosexuality, deviation consists of violating the provisions of the dominant type of social regulation of sexuality. Rules of sexual behavior are always and everywhere one of the most important components of the normative order of society. Among other things, because sexuality also involves reproduction, vital for any collective, no society could afford to leave sexual behavior ambiguous and leave it to its members to shape it according to individual discretion. Social regulation of sexuality has therefore produced numerous arrangements of relations between genders, definitions of gender, and institutionalization of marital and family relationships.

The severity of condemning homosexuality, as a sexual "offense," is related to the generalized regularity, which Durkheim also observed, that the intensity of social reaction to a deviant act is proportional to the importance of the place the violated norm occupies in the collective moral order (Durkheim, 1972). The statistical minority of homosexually oriented individuals within the general population is not decisive here. "Although homosexuality is usually considered a special 'problem' to be investigated in isolation from other social phenomena, closer examination reveals that attitudes toward homosexuality are inseparably linked to broader issues: the functions of the family, evolution of gender roles, and attitudes toward sexuality in general... Official and popular reactions to homosexuality and homosexuals can be taken as key indicators of broader conceptions of sexuality" (Weeks, 1983: 3). An analysis of the perception of homosexuality in a society, therefore, speaks volumes about the nature of its entire moral order.

This text will focus on the sociological view of male homosexuality. This limitation is imposed by the chosen theoretical perspective: if we start from the idea of a social construct, then we do not inquire about the "phenomenon itself," but its social definition is decisive. Male and female homosexuality are undoubtedly socially defined quite differently; there is little similarity between them except, quite abstractly speaking, social condemnation. For the analysis of the construction of female homosexuality, entirely different factors, influences, and ideological contents would be relevant.

Concepts

Although the terms "homosexuality" and "homosexual" may seem self-evident to us, they are deeply ambiguous. First of all, the word itself was coined relatively recently: it was coined in 1869 by the Austrian physician Karolj Maria Benkert from the Greek prefix homo ("same") and the Latin root sexus ("sex"). From the 1930s, the term takes on the function of the most general designation for the whole complex of phenomena related to same-sex orientation. At the time of its inception, the term "inversion" (reflecting the prevailing medical model at the time), and various idiosyncratic and literary designations such as "uranism" (Karl Ulrichs), "Greek love," "homophilia," "homogeneous love," "third" or "middle" sex (Magnus Hirschfeld), etc., were in circulation. Terms of biblical origin are also used: "sodomy," "unnatural vice," "sin against nature," or even "crimen inter Christianos non nominandum" ("crime that must not be named among Christians"). In pre-Christian Europe and non-European civilizations, however, homosexuality generally did not have a specific name, as it was not perceived as a distinct and unified group of behaviors and characteristics. Through long and widespread use, words easily take on the appearance of reality and objectivity. However, concepts of homosexuality and homosexual, like other ideologically significant concepts, are products of a historical moment. They reflect the newly emerging ideological need to conceptually unify all manifestations of homosexual tendencies and thereby distinguish them as a separate entity: "These terms are not just new labels for old realities: they point to a changing reality, both in terms of how hostile society labels homosexuality and how these stigmatized individuals see themselves" (Weeks, 1983: 3).

Furthermore, homosexuality as a generalized designation refers to categories of different orders. First, there is homosexual behavior - satisfying sexual needs with a person of the same sex. This is not easy to define or operationalize either: opinions differ on whether the term should be applied only to permanent and frequent, or also to occasional activity; whether it implies exclusive orientation toward same-sex individuals for erotic satisfaction, or allows sexual contact with the opposite sex; whether the sexual act should be complete, which is again defined differently, etc. Homosexuality is also often designated by more or less conscious desires, fantasies, and dreams of an erotic nature, directed towards the same sex, regardless of whether they are realized in sexual practice.

The situation is no less complicated with the term "homosexual." Here, "we must distinguish between homosexual behavior, which is universal, and homosexual identity, which is historically specific" (Weeks, 1983: 11). The term began to be applied to a specific and more or less clearly defined group of people within the wider population only in the 19th century, in the "positive" era of science and rapid industrialization in Europe and North America. The idea of a "homosexual" as a social role and identity was not clearly differentiated before that. Not even Christian moralism considered "unnatural vice" to be a characteristic of a recognizable group of people. It was a latent possibility of all human beings, sinful as they already are, and punishments were meted out according to the act itself, not to the person as an individual. However, the positivist epochal consciousness, which was particularly expressed in criminology through the anthropological school, placed the source of deviation (any, including this one) in the personality of the actors, usually as an innate and irreparable trait. Researchers still argue about the exact historical moment of the emergence of the "homosexual" as a differentiated social identity, but most place that moment somewhere between the dawn of the modern era and the mid-19th century.

Contrary to the medical and usually stigmatizing aura of the term "homosexual," the label "gay" emerged as an authentic product of homosexual subculture, or its effort to offer homosexual individuals a means of self-identification without derogation. While "homosexual" is more of an object of social labeling, "gay" is the subject of its own practice, a self-aware individual. He participates in gay subculture: "An isolated gay is not gay. An isolated gay thinks he is the only gay in the world, and probably does not even think that." He, at least in principle, has freed himself from socially imposed feelings of guilt about his sexual inclinations and does not shy away from gay identity: "A gay person is someone who is sexually inclined towards the same sex and realizes this through social factors. In this way, he builds his language, fashion, art, consciousness, and institutions, such as bars, magazines, centers, in short, a community. On the other hand, a homosexual is someone whose contact with persons of the same sex begins and ends with the sexual act itself, without a clear awareness of his true identity" (Lešnik, 1988).

Socio-cultural Variations

Anthropological and historiographical research have shown that, besides the homosexual act itself, little else was similar in connection with this phenomenon in various epochs and societies. Firstly, homosexual behavior was much more widespread than in today's society, integrated into the normative order and devoid of any connection to the concept of a "homosexual" as a social role. The plasticity of human sexuality and its susceptibility to the influence of social factors perhaps represent the best example of the cultural relativity of norms: "In this area, it is difficult for us to imagine something that does not represent an established norm in another culture, or at least a daily occurrence that is tolerated" (Berger and Luckmann, 1966: 67). In this way, it became clear that the once prevalent assumption of universal disapproval of homosexuality as a form of sexual expression had no basis. On the contrary, many societies throughout history institutionalized it as a legitimate or even praiseworthy form of sexual activity.

Just as contact with another symbolic universe allows insight that one's own world is just one of many possibilities (Berger and Luckmann, 1966: 190), so knowledge of the diversity of social reactions to homosexuality showed Westerners that the stigma of this phenomenon, which prevails in their culture, cannot be considered "natural." Only then was it possible to reverse the initial question: instead of being preoccupied with the enigma of "Where does homosexuality come from? What causes it? What encourages it?", one could now ask: "Why are disgust, hatred, and fear of homosexuality, and the persecution of homosexuals, so deeply ingrained in Western civilization? What circumstances are responsible for this, and what interests are involved?" This reversed question was one of the first topics undertaken by the new direction of cultural studies, with an authentic origin in the gay subculture, namely, gay studies, established since the 1970s.

In tribal societies, homosexual relationships were practiced in three basic forms (Greenberg, 1988: 25-88): intergenerational, as part of initiation rituals, trans-sexual, through the institution of berdache, or egalitarian, as part of male friendship. In most of these cultures, homosexual relationships, in themselves, did not carry stigma, and "the mere fact of engaging in a sexual relationship with a person of the same sex never became the basis for ascribing a separate social identity" (Greenberg, 1988: 73). Homosexual relationships did not have social significance as such but were classified and interpreted according to other significant aspects within the normative system of society.

The homoeroticism of art and philosophy in ancient Greece, or the homosexual connotation of actual relationships among men - whether intergenerational (between an older teacher-lover, erastes, and a younger student-beloved, eromenos) or egalitarian (for example, among Spartan warriors) - are well-known and often analyzed historical facts. Here, we will only mention that homosexuality in ancient Greece was placed in the context of understanding gender. Men and women were attributed two entirely separate, qualitatively different, and mutually opposing worlds: while spirituality, art, beauty, nobility, morality, and public affairs ("transcendence") belonged to men, women were associated with materiality, reproduction, repetitiveness, earthiness, privacy, confinement ("immanence"). Hellenic homoeroticism in its various forms was less, in terms of social definition, "homosexuality" in today's sense of the word, and more a particular case of applying kalokagathia ("being beautiful and noble of soul") - an ideal that only a man could achieve.

In the Christian moral universe of the Middle Ages, there was, for the first time, the institutionalization of sharp condemnations and punishments for homosexual relationships. Judeo-Christian morality and the Bible itself are often proclaimed as the main causes of this shift. In the Holy Scriptures, there are several places where homosexual relationships are mentioned, mostly with a negative connotation: in the story of Sodom in the Book of Genesis, then in Leviticus (Mosaic laws), then in the New Testament in the letters of the Apostle Paul. However, apart from being a sacred text and a set of imperative moral rules for Christian communities, the Bible can certainly be read as a historical-literary document of ancient Jewish culture in which it originated. From this perspective, many comments and prohibitions regarding homosexual relationships become readable in the broader context of ritual rules by which that culture sought to mark its distinctiveness from surrounding peoples. Today, it is impossible to determine to what extent the original Jewish legislators viewed homosexuality as an isolated practice to be separately discussed and specially condemned because our present view is irreversibly marked by meanings accumulated over the centuries that separate us. The only certainty is that in the Holy Scriptures, there is no mention of "homosexuals" as a separate kind of people, only of the act of sexual intercourse between men.

Contrary to widespread notions of the leading role of the Church in persecuting homosexuals, at the beginning of the Middle Ages, it opposed the first attempts to declare homosexuality a criminal offense. This was based on the view that public laws should not deal with such a private matter irrelevant to both the state and the Church (see Boswell, 1980). Nevertheless, during this period, the criminalization of homosexual acts began (for example, in Justinian's Code). An interesting novelty is the realization by those in power that accusations of homosexuality legitimized by the Bible could be used for political purposes; thus, even Justinian used this legal pretext to get rid of personal enemies. At the moment when the homosexual act was definitively placed among criminal offenses, often punishable by death, which happened in the tumultuous period of the transition from the 12th to the 13th century, homosexual practice was already clearly ideologically associated with various "Others" who threatened the moral unity of the Christian community and therefore deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth: Muslims, Bogomils, and other heretics, Templars, and the like.

In the Renaissance, the resurgence of homoerotic motifs in literature and painting, and the known homosexual tendencies from the biographies of great men of this period, are commonplace. However, their significance should not be overestimated. Repressive legislation enacted in previous centuries still held sway. Moreover, we know almost nothing about the lives of socially less significant individuals and classes. Furthermore, the emergence of capitalism at the beginning of the Modern Age assigned the family the role of the basic social cell and the cornerstone of social organization, thereby giving new ideological support to homophobic sexual morals. The ideology of the monogamous family as the only permissible form of private and sexual life solidified new notions of love and eroticism, new sexual rules, new significance and methods of child socialization, new definitions of gender roles. The celebration of the family and sexual asceticism became part of the battle cry of the rising bourgeoisie, which used accusations of licentiousness (including homosexuality) of the aristocracy and royal courts in its struggles for the redistribution of political power. In the following centuries (17th-18th), the role of the middle class as the main dictator of moral, especially sexual, rules is only confirmed. Thus, there is a contradictory development: on the one hand, legislation, influenced by the Enlightenment, is liberalized in some places (Napoleon's Code and its offspring exclude homosexuality from incriminations); on the other hand, homophobia among the broadest layers, with the support of the middle class, is definitively reinforced.

During the 20th century, divergences became even more pronounced. On one hand, emancipatory aspirations in this area, as well as in others, are growing; the first genuine gay subcultures are emerging, which gradually "emerge from the shadows" from the mid-century onwards, culminating in the 1970s in a fully politicized, clearly articulated gay liberation movement. On the other hand, this century witnessed more systematic repression of homosexuals than any before it. At the beginning of the century, the criminalization of homosexual acts was almost obligatory in all national legislations, with frequent and lengthy penalties. Also, our time witnessed drastic persecutions of homosexuals in Nazi Germany and Stalinist USSR, where they were deprived of all rights and sent to concentration and labor camps. The phenomenon of reacting to AIDS reflects this dialectic well. While the emergence and dramatic spread of an incurable disease that often affects homosexuals revived almost forgotten theological and pseudo-naturalistic discourse, giving wings to "moral crusaders" who saw it as a "just punishment" for an undesirable way of life, the gay subculture, aided by human rights activists worldwide, responded readily and energetically to neoconservative attacks. Some parameters, therefore, are irreversibly changed.

Biological and Psychological Theories of Homosexuality

Let's delve into the scientific discourse on homosexuality. Positivism, the scientific ideology of the past and a good part of this century, sought the ultimate causes of phenomena, objective and reliable knowledge, and clear guidelines for social policy in all areas, including human sexuality. It was precisely positivism that brought about the first "scientific" theories of homosexuality. Until recently, dealing with etiology was almost the only permitted form of thinking on this topic within any scientific discipline. Medicine and psychology long held a monopoly on this. Dozens of theories and their variants about the causes of homosexuality were formulated, many of which are still in circulation today. However, their multitude is simultaneously a sign of their weakness because none of them has been definitively confirmed or refuted. Their mistake lay in trying to find one, single, and unequivocal cause of homosexuality, which would apply indiscriminately to all cases.

Biological theories, developed within the framework of the "medical model," the most orthodox positivist approach, branch out into variants of different degrees of subtlety - from Lombrosian (Cesare Lombroso) ideas about homosexuality as a form of atavism (a descent down the evolutionary ladder), through various variants of hormonal theories (disrupted function of the hypothalamus or sex glands causing an excess of female hormones), to assumptions about genetic disorder (see Hunt, 1977). This orientation has extensively studied transsexuals, but due to their rarity (both in the general population and among homosexuals), the knowledge gained through this avenue cannot claim general validity.

Psychological theories have primarily developed within psychoanalysis, following Freud's view of homosexuality as a lag in psychosexual development. According to Freud, homosexuals never reach the stage of genital maturity, which is caused by the structure of family relationships where a dominant or overly protective mother prevails, and the father is weak or absent, so the son lacks a role model of his gender to identify with. The Oedipus complex is never resolved, which prevents later access to women as sexual partners. Although pathologizing, Freud's explanation represented progress and humanization compared to earlier theories.

Psychoanalysis further links homosexuality with narcissism: the homosexual fixates on himself as a sexual object and seeks someone similar in his environment. The results of psychoanalytic research that "reveal" a high correlation between homosexual inclination and a range of disorders (sadism/masochism, voyeurism, fetishism, promiscuity, inability to establish strong emotional bonds, etc. /see Thompson, 1985: 98-100/) have significantly contributed to establishing a scientific, and then popular understanding of homosexuality as a personality disorder. Most attempts to empirically verify psychological theories have been seriously weakened by sampling among psychiatric patients, so it is no wonder that the results are skewed towards pathology.

Both biological and psychological theories search for the causes of homosexuality in the sphere of an individual's sexual orientation. According to them, homosexuality is not something a person does, but an inherent characteristic: "These views always imply fundamentally that an individual's choice of sexual partner is closely related to the masculinity or femininity of his personality" (Kinsey, 1953: 638). The possibility that a homosexual man is in every way, marked by all possible "male" characteristics, who simply achieves erotic satisfaction with another man, is excluded.

Socio-psychological theories aim to highlight the importance of social factors. The formation of homosexual orientation has been linked to staying in closed institutions (prisons, monasteries, boarding schools, the military), seduction (early homosexual experience brought pleasure); or failure in heterosexual contacts. However, these theories leave unexplained why many - the majority - of people who have had these experiences still ultimately opt for heterosexuality.

All three groups of theories indiscriminately mix factual and evaluative judgments. More or less openly, they take homosexuality as something wrong, or at least bizarre. The fact that exclusively homosexual individuals make up a small percentage of society is translated into a normative plan, and they are declared a "mistake."

The pathological model was first stepped out of by Alfred Kinsey, with his revolutionary and shocking research on the sexual lives of Americans based on a sample of 12,000 respondents (Kinsey, 1953). According to his team's findings, 37% of adult Americans had at least one homosexual experience to orgasm (among the unmarried, 50%). Changing sexual habits throughout life, or combining homo- and heterosexual activities in the same period, was recorded in a high percentage of cases. Kinsey concludes that the use of the terms "homosexual" or "heterosexual" as nouns-labels for individual persons makes little sense: these words, on the contrary, should be "used to designate the nature of the sexual relationships achieved, or the stimuli to which the individual erotically responds... From our findings, it is obvious that many people cannot be classified as heterosexuals or homosexuals, on the principle of 'all or nothing'" (Kinsey, 1953: 638-39). Instead, Kinsey offers a continuous scale from degree 0 (individuals whose sexual past contains no homosexual experience, neither as a relationship nor as arousal) to degree 6 (exclusive homosexuals). Real human beings are not only classified on one of the 7 degrees, but also on all points in between.

Labeling Theory and Social Constructionism

In recent decades, the pathological model no longer satisfies, and alternative approaches in the sociological study of homosexuality are being sought. Several lines of development favor this.

Symbolic interactionism, or labeling theory, formulated in the 1960s, drew attention to the value judgments hidden behind the apparent impartiality of the pathological model. The dichotomies of "healthy/sick" and "right/wrong" can no longer be taken as unquestionable starting points, as they are always conditioned by the structure of the prevailing pattern of thinking of a given society and are closely linked to social stratification and power relations. Interactionists have highlighted the norm itself as an important subject of sociological consideration. Deviation from the norm - yes, but: "whose norm?" - says one of the founders of this direction (Becker, 1963). Sociology has thus abandoned exclusive interest in "deviants" (actors of violations of valid moral and/or legal norms) and focused on the two-way dynamic relationship between the individual-deviant and the society that stigmatizes him as such. Interactionism fundamentally redefines the concept of deviance: "Deviance is not the quality of the act that the individual performs, but the result of the application of rules and sanctions to 'violators' by others. A deviant is one to whom this label has been successfully applied; deviant behavior is that behavior which people so label" (Becker, 1963: 9). Deviant behavior loses its former aura of positive givenness. In other words, in researching homosexuality, sociology focuses less on the nature and causes of sexual relationships between individuals of the same sex and begins to analyze the character, social roots, and the way norms governing that area are applied, as well as the reciprocal influence of labeling processes on the individual's self-conception ("self-labeling"). "From a sociological point of view, the original causes may not be too important for the patterns of homosexuality observed in a given society... The patterns of homosexuality in adults are more a result of the social structures and values that surround the homosexual after he becomes homosexual, or conceives of himself that way, than of the original and ultimate causes" (Gagnon and Simon, 1968: 352).

Another line of constructionism stems from the classic work of Berger and Luckmann on the social construction of reality (1966), which emphasizes the process of socially constituting the very categories of thinking about reality (starting with the answer to the most ordinary question: "what is happening here" - the problem of defining reality). These categories are then habitualized and institutionalized, "objectified," and by being passed on to new generations through socialization, they are further consolidated and become guidelines for social practice. The social construct could then be described as "the interpretation that people commonly give to objects and events around them. However, it is much more than that, as it also represents the social manifestations that people cause by their activities, as a result of that interpretation" (Rock, 1973: 19). In our time, the social sciences have become aware of their inherent reflexivity. They have imposed on themselves the obligation to reflect on their own conceptual apparatus and its ideological elements, and at the same time, they point to the connection between the widespread pattern of thinking about society and the social practice into which that pattern "returns" and reshapes it (Giddens, 1998).

The non-scientific factor - the birth and strengthening of the gay liberation and gay pride movements - had a multiple influence on abandoning the pathological model, primarily politically, but somewhat also "epistemologically." Namely, the pathologization of homosexuality implied the homogeneity of the group that is placed beyond the line of sexually "healthy." The need for monolithicism created the stereotype of a "homosexual" that had long gone unquestioned. However, the "coming out" and public activism of an increasing number of mutually very different people shattered this monochrome picture, showing that homosexuals, as a "group," are as heterogeneous as society itself.

Homosexuality is, therefore, a social construct. Only the sexual relationship between individuals of the same sex, as such, is universal; everything else is the result of complex social processes. Even the concept of "homosexuality," as mentioned, exists only in some places. What will enter the definition of homosexuality and how the encompassed behaviors will be evaluated, which elements will influence that evaluation - all that depends on the normative pattern of society, which arises in the interplay of social practice and reflection on it. The social treatment of actors based on that evaluation varies even more: besides the order of values, it also depends on the current power relations, the general social situation, the position within the social hierarchy, etc.

Although they constitute the most suitable framework for a sociological approach to homosexuality, labeling theory, as well as constructionism in general, also have their shortcomings. As for the former, if the role of social reaction in creating deviance is absolutized, many facts that contradict it are overlooked: it is possible for deviant (in our case, homosexual) behavior to become publicly known but not lead to labeling; living successfully in the concealment of deviant behavior ("in the closet") is an extremely complex matter and cannot be simply dismissed as a life without any label; resistance to self-labeling can have various variations and nuances. The sociology of homosexuality must move along the line of complex interaction - from the individual, with all his individual specificities, through the gay subculture, if it exists, with its unique content, to various forms of social control, which in turn act with different means and intensity. Therefore, labeling theory needs to be supplemented with elements of Merton's theory of deviance (classifying individual reactions to society's adaptive demands: conformity, innovation, ritualism, withdrawal, rebellion), as well as the theory of subcultures, a branch of developed functionalist theory.

As for social constructionism, which denotes a whole way of thinking much broader than labeling theory, when applied in its extreme version to this area, it claims that the social character of the homosexual was created by historical-cultural development, practically out of nothing, somewhere at the beginning of the 19th century. Things, of course, are not so simple; however, it can still be argued that Western civilization, at the peak of the industrial revolution, represents an epochal-civilizational locus of definitive shaping of the homosexual social identity, which, in terms of prominence and sharpness of the sanctions it entails, cannot be compared with any similar phenomenon from previous periods. Hence, with due caution, the concept of a social construct remains the most adequate theoretical tool offered so far for the sociological analysis of homosexuality.

Literature:

Becker, Howard S. 1963. Outsiders. Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, Glencoe: The Free Press.

Berger, Peter and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. /1987/ The Social Construction of Reality, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Boswell, John. 1980. Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Durkheim, Emile. 1972. The Division of Labor in Society, translated by B. Markovič, Belgrade: Prosveta.

Gagnon, John and William Simon. 1968. "Homosexuality: The Formulation of a Sociological Perspective", in: M. Lefton, J. Skipper, C. McCaghy (eds.), Approaches to Deviance, New York: Appleton Century Crofts.

Giddens, Anthony. 1998. The Consequences of Modernity, translated by V. Biga and M. Lazič, Belgrade: "Filip Višnjič".

Greenberg, David F. 1988. The Construction of Homosexuality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hunt, Morton. 1977. Gay: What You Should Know about Homosexuality, New York: Simon and Schuster.

Kinsey, Alfred et al. 1953. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders.

Lešnik, Bogdan. 1988. Interview with Bogdan Lešnik, Gayzine, bulletin of the Gay and Lesbian Section of ŠKUC "Magnus", no. 1, p. 2, Ljubljana.

Rock, Paul. 1973. Deviant Behaviour, London: Hutchinson University Library.

Thompson, Denise. 1985. Flaws in the Social Fabric: Homosexuals and Society in Sydney, Sydney: Allen and Unwin.

Weeks, Jeffrey. 1983. Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain, from the 19th Century to the Present, London: Quartet Books.

Author's Note

Ivana Spasić (1965), sociologist and literary translator. Graduated in sociology in 1990, with a thesis on "Gay Subculture and Social Control of Homosexuality." Works as a research associate at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory in Belgrade. In addition to articles and studies, she published the book "Meanings of Encounter: Goffman's Sociology of Interaction" (Belgrade, 1996) and edited the anthology "Interpretive Sociology" (Belgrade, 1998).