4.3 /10 2 Votes
Country United States Media type Print (Paperback) ISBN 978-0801077135 Subjects Homosexuality, Parenting | 2.3/5 Goodreads Language English Pages 170 Originally published 1982 Page count 170 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity is a 1982 book about homosexuality by George Alan Rekers. The book was influential, but has been criticized for Rekers's anti-gay stance.
Contents
Summary
Rekers describes homosexuality as "promiscuous and perverted sexual behavior" and bemoans the fact that "homosexuality has been sold to the unwary public as a right between consenting adults."
Reception
Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity was influential.
Mainstream media
Robyn E. Blumner of the Tampa Bay Times criticized Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity for its "gay-bashing" rhetoric, such as Rekers's claim that gay activists secretly want to legalize pedophilia.
Scientific and academic journals
Psychologist Kenneth Zucker reviewed the book in Archives of Sexual Behavior, writing that it was "written in a manner easily understood by the lay reader." Zucker noted that some of the material was controversial, including the chapter recounting Rekers' behavior as an expert witness in a child custody case, in which he testified against a lesbian mother seeking to regain custody of her daughters. According to Zucker, Rekers argued that the woman should not receive custody because her lesbianism "placed her children at risk for deviant sex-role development". Zucker criticized Rekers for ignoring scholarly literature suggesting that there is little evidence for such claims.
Evaluations in books
Neuroscientist Simon LeVay wrote that Reker's work reveals his "virulent antipathy towards homosexuality." Jackie M. Blount found Rekers's "language and logic reminiscent of works from earlier decades", comparing Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity to Peter and Barbara Wyden's earlier Growing Up Straight (1968).