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After the Wrath of God

2015-10-16T14:10:13Z

Gahistory: Gahistory moved page After the Wrath of God to After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion: Connect category link with pre-created page

#REDIRECT [[After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion]]

After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion

2015-10-16T14:10:12Z

Gahistory: Gahistory moved page After the Wrath of God to After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion: Connect category link with pre-created page

[http://www.example.com link title]{{Infobox book | name =After the Wrath of God: AIDS,Sexuality, and American Religion | image = [[File:After the Wrath of God jpg|200px|alt=Cover]] | image_caption = | author = Anthony M. Petro| translator = | country = United States| language = English| series = | publisher = Oxford University Press| pub_date = 2015| pages = 294| isbn = 978-0-19-939128-8| oclc = | congress = }}

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Twentieth Century United States

2015-10-16T14:07:46Z

Gahistory: /* Book Summaries */

==Book Summaries==
* Donna Alvah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/women-and-children-first-the-importance-of-gender-and-military-families-in-the-cold-war-era/ Unofficial Ambassadors: American Military Families Overseas and the Cold War, 1946-1965] (2007).
* Luis Alvarez. [[The Power of the Zoot|The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II]] (2008).
* Karen Anderson. [[Wartime Women|Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II]] (1981).
* Michael Aronson. [[Nickelodeon City|Nickelodeon City: Pittsburgh at the Movies, 1905-1929]] (2008).
* Eric Avila. [[Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight|Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles]] (2004).
* Beth Bailey. [[America’s Army|America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force]] (2009).
* Beth Bailey & David Farber. [[The First Strange Place|The First Strange Place: The Alchemy of Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii]] (1992).
* Beth Bailey. [[From Front Porch to Back Seat|From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America]] (1989).
* Mark Brilliant. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/californication-race-ethnicity-and-unity-in-twentieth-century-california/ Californication: Race, Ethnicity, and Unity in Twentieth Century California] (2012).
* Amy Bridges. [[Morning Glories]] (1999).
* Laura Briggs. [[Reproducing Empire|Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico]] (2002).
* Alan Brinkley. [[Voices of Protest|Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, & the Great Depression]] (1983).
* Charlotte Brooks. [[Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends|Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California]] (2009).
* Catherine Fisher Collins. [[The Imprisonment of African American Women| The Imprisonment of African American Women: Causes, Conditions, and Future Implications]] (1997).
* Robert Caro. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/dog-days-classics-robert-caros-controversial-portrait-of-robert-moses-and-new-york/ The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York](1974)
* Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley - His Battle for the Nation and Chicago] (2001)
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[A Consumers’ Republic|A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America]] (2003).
* Lizabeth Cohen. [[Making a New Deal|Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939]] (2008).

* Nancy F. Cott. [[Public Vows|Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation]] (2002).
* Pete Daniel, [[Lost Revolutions|Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s]] (2000)
* Mike Davis. [[City of Quartz|City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles]] (2006).
* Mike Davis & Michael Sprinker. [[Magical Urbanism|Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US Big City]] (2001).
* Michael J. Dear. [[The Postmodern Urban Condition]] (2001).
* Robert C. Donnelly. [[Dark Rose]] (2011).
* Steven Erie. [[Globalizing L.A.|Globalizing L.A.: Trade, Infrastructure, and Regional Development]] (2004).
* Steven P. Erie. [[Beyond Chinatown|Beyond Chinatown: The Metropolitan Water District, Growth, and the Environment in Southern California]] (2006).
* Elizabeth Ewen. [[Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars]] (1985).
* Dannelly Farrow. [[Dixie's Daughters]] (2003).
* Barbara Ferman. [[Challenging the Growth Machine|Challenging the Growth Machine: Neighborhood Politics in Chicago and Pittsburgh]] (1996).
* Marcie Ferris and Mark Greenberg. [[Jewish Roots in Southern Soil|Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History]] (2006).
* John M. Findlay. [[Magic Lands|Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940]] (1993).
* Steven Gregory. [[Black Corona|Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community]] (1999).
* Jason Hackworth. [[The Neoliberal City|The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism]] (2006).
* William Ivy Hair. [[Carnival of Fury|Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900]] (2008).
* Tona J. Hangen. [[Redeeming the Dial|Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America]] (2013).
* Andrew Hartman. [[A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars]] (2015)
* Chester W. Hartman. [[Yerba Buena|Yerba Buena: land grab and community resistance in San Francisco,]] (1974).
* Georgina Hickey. [[Hope and Danger in the New South City|Hope and Danger in the New South City: Working-Class Women and Urban Development in Atlanta, 1890-1940]] (2005).
* Richard Hofstadter. [[The American Political Tradition|The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made it]] (1989).
* Daniel Horowitz. [[Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”|Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism]] (2000).
* John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle. [[Lots of Parking|Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture]] (2004).
* Daniel Martinez HoSang. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/erasing-race-whiteness-california-and-the-colorblind-bind/ Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California](2010)
* Jonathan Hughes (Editor)& Simon Sadler (Editor).[[Non-Plan|Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism]] (2000).
* Daniel Hurewitz. [[Bohemian Los Angeles|Bohemian Los Angeles: and the Making of Modern Politics]] (2007).
* Marilynn S. Johnson. [[The Second Gold Rush|The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II]] (1994).
* Tony Judt. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/neoliberalisms-license-to-ill/ Ill Fares the Land] (2011).
* Larry D. Kramer. [[The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review]] (2004).
* Joel Kotkin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/americas-ace-in-the-hole-is-of-course-its-awesomeness/ The Next Hundred Million:America in 2050] (2010)
* Kevin M. Kruse. [[White Flight|White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism]] (2007).
* Matthew D. Lassiter. [[The Silent Majority|The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South]] (2007).
*Gary L. Lehring. [[Officially Gay|The Political Construction of Sexuality by the U. S. Military]] (2003).
* William R. Leach. [[Land of Desire|Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture]] (1994).
* Michael F. Logan. [[Fighting Sprawl and City Hall|Fighting Sprawl and City Hall: Resistance to Urban Growth in the Southwest]] (1995).
* Roger W. Lotchin. [[Fortress California, 1910-1961|Fortress California, 1910-1961: From Warfare to Welfare]] (2002).
* Lisa Lowe. [[Immigrant Acts|Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics]] (1996).
* Robert S. Lynd & Helen Merrell Lynd. [[Middletown|Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture]] (1959).
* Catherine Lutz. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century] (2001).
* Nancy MacLean. [[Freedom Is Not Enough|Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace]] (2008).
* Isaac Martin. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/stalking-the-tax-man-the-pervasive-influence-of-the-property-tax-revolt/ The Permanent Tax Revolt: How Property Tax Transformed America] (2008).
* Douglas Massey & Nancy Denton. [[American Apartheid|American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass]] (1993).
* Elaine Tyler May. [[America and The Pill|America and The Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation]] (2010).
* Carol Lynn McKibben. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Racial Beachhead: Diversity and Democracy in a Military Town] (2012).
* Lisa McGirr. [[Suburban Warriors|Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right]] (2002).
* James Miller. [[Flowers in the Dustbin|Flowers in the Dustbin: The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977]] (2000).
* Glen M. Mimura. [[Ghostlife of the Third Cinema|Ghostlife of Third Cinema: Asian American Film and Video]] (2009).
* John Hull Mollenkopf. [[The Contested City]] (1983).
* Maggi M. Morehouse. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ Fighting in the Jim Crow Army: Black Man and Women Remember World War II] (2000).
* Edward P. Morgan. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/a-mediating-mess-how-american-post-wwii-media-undermined-democracy/ What Really Happened to the Sixties: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy] (2011)
* Charles Moskos Jr. and John Sibley Butler. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/double-victory-from-wwii-to-the-avf-african-americans-and-the-u-s-military/ All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way] (1996).
* Andrew H. Myers. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/3187/ Black, White, and Olive Drab: Racial Integration at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and the Civil Rights Movement] (2006).
* Armando Navarro. [[The Cristal Experiment|The Cristal Experiment: A Chicano Struggle for Community Control]] (1998).
* Becky M. Nicolaides. [[My Blue Heaven|My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965]] (2002).
* Anthony M. Petro. [[After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion]] (2015).
* Margaret Pugh O’Mara. [[Cities of Knowledge|Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley]] (2004).
* Gilbert Osofsky. [[Harlem|Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto : Negro New York, 1890-1930]] (1996).
* Rick Perlstein. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/essence-precedes-existence-the-problem-of-identity-politics-in-hurewitzs-bohemian-la/ Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America](2009).
* Rebecca Jo Plant. [[Mom|Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America]] (2012).
* Brenda Gayle Plummer. [[Window on Freedom|Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945-1988]] (2003).
* Jerald E. Podair. [[The Strike that Changed New York|The Strike that Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis]] (2002).
* Doris Marie Provine. [[Unequal Under Law|Unequal Under Law: Race in the War on Drugs]] (2007).
* Daniel T. Rodgers. [[Contested Truths|Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since Independence]] (1998).
* David Roediger. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/dog-days-classics-the-wages-of-whiteness-and-the-white-people-who-love-them/ The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class] (1991).
* Adam Rome. [[The Bulldozer in the Countryside|The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism]] (2001).
* Richard Ronald. [[The Ideology of Home Ownership|The Ideology of Home Ownership: Homeowner Societies and the Role of Housing]] (2008).
* Jake Rosenfeld. [[What Unions No Longer Do]] (2014).
* Peter Henry Rossi & Robert A. Dentler. [[The Politics of Urban Renewal|The Politics of Urban Renewal: The Chicago Findings]] (1981).
* Sheila Rowbotham [[Dreamers of a New Day|Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the Twentieth Century]] (2010).
* Mike Royko. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/dog-days-classics-political-boss-and-midwestern-pharaoh-richard-j-daleys-chicago-legacy/ Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago] (1971)
* Roger Sanjek. [[The Future of Us All|The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City]] (1998).
* Jennifer Scanlon. [[Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, the Woman Behind Cosmopolitan Magazine]] (2009).
* Bruce Schulman & Bruce J. Schulman. [[The Seventies|The Seventies: The Great Shift In American Culture, Society, And Politics]] (2002).
* Joel Schwartz. [[The New York Approach|The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and Redevelopment of the Inner City]] (1993).
*Gary S. Selby [[Martin Luther King and the Rhetoric of Freedom: The Exodus Narrative in America's Struggle for Civil Rights]] (2008)
* Josh Sides. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/making-san-francisco-josh-sides-erotic-city/ Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco] (2009).
* Nayan Shah. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/intimate-citizenship-the-influence-of-marriage-sexuality-and-transience-on-national-membership/Stranger Intimacy:Contesting Race, Sexuality and Law in the American Northwest] (2012).
* David J. Silbey. [[A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902]] (2007).
* Rickie Solinger. [[Beggars and Choosers|Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States]] (2002).
* Allan H. Spear. [[Black Chicago|Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920]] (1969).
* Todd Swanstrom. [[The Crisis of Growth Politics|The Crisis of Growth Politics: Cleveland, Kucinich, and the Challenge of Urban Populism]] (1988).
* Ronald Takaki. [[Hiroshima|Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb]] (1996).
* Penny M. Von Eschen. [[Satchmo Blows Up The World|Satchmo Blows Up The World: Jazz Ambassadors Play The Cold War]] (2004).
* Robert Wiebe. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/dog-day-classics-robert-h-wiebe-and-the-search-for-order/ The Search for Order, 1877 - 1920] (1967).
* Andrew Wiese. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/getting-to-the-mountaintop-the-suburban-dreams-of-african-americans/ Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century] (2004)
* Rhonda Y. Williams. [[The Politics of Public Housing|The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality]] (2004).
* William Appleman Williams. [[The Tragedy of American Diplomacy]] (2009).
* Gwendolyn Wright. [[Building the Dream|Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America]] (1983).
*Young B. Marilyn. [[The Vietnam Wars|The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990]] (1991).
*Zimmerman, Andrew. [http://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2011/09/26/the-ties-that-bind-the-transnational-trick-of-immobilizing-the-mobile/ Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South] (2010).
*Washington Harriet. [[Medical Apartheid|Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present]] (2006)

After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion

2015-10-16T14:03:35Z

Gahistory:

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2015-10-16T13:24:01Z

Gahistory: After the Wrath review part 4

After the Wrath review part 4

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2015-10-16T13:23:21Z

Gahistory: After the Wrath review part 3

After the Wrath review part 3

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2015-10-16T13:22:42Z

Gahistory: After the Wrath review part 2

After the Wrath review part 2

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2015-10-16T13:21:54Z

Gahistory: Review part 1

Review part 1

After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion

2015-10-16T13:19:15Z

Gahistory:

After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion

2015-10-02T16:42:37Z

Gahistory: Book Review. After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality and American Religion

{{Infobox book | name =After the Wrath of God: AIDS,Sexuality, and American Religion | image = [[File:After the Wrath of God jpg|200px|alt=Cover]] | image_caption = | author = Anthony M. Petro| translator = | country = United States| language = English| series = | publisher = Oxford University Press| pub_date = 2015| pages = 294| isbn = 978-0-19-939128-8| oclc = | congress = }}

After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion
By Anthony M. Petro (Oxford, 2015)
Book review by Jodie Knapton

Boston University professor and religion scholar, Anthony Petro, delivers a brief and revealing examination of the intersection of religion (mostly Christianity and largely Catholic) and the AIDS epidemic in America spanning essentially the first fifteen years of history following the discovery of the virus. Drawing upon and surveying the extant secondary literature and mining primary texts such as journals, church records, organizational documents, and mass media publications, he zeroes in upon discourse analysis, the construction of AIDS “as a moral epidemic” by religious conservatives and yet considering a “wider lens” (3), a “wider spectrum” (14) and “much broader” range of religious voices as they “shaped public discussions of AIDS” and related subject matter (2). Michel Foucault appears by page five of the introduction, and Benedict Anderson also inspires Petro’s analysis as he considers the “imagined community” that is the United States and what he terms “moral citizenship”. By this he means not just a legal status but rather an actual identity created discursively and deployed tactically to imaginatively realize the nation-state in sexual terms. The immediate post-WWII red scare was over, but homosexuals were still cast as un-American by virtue of their non-normative sexuality; and, while some religious institutions and leaders championed nonjudgmental care for persons with AIDS, the conservative Right found in the “gay cancer” a fresh reason to undergird their culture war against secular humanism and the perceived decline in morality. In four chapters, Petro looks at the religious culture war surrounding the AIDS epidemic, focusing upon specifically national discourse as revealed in something like case studies. His consistent analytical focus is upon language and its uses to further religious ideology, political agendas, and the overall handling of the crisis.
The first chapter, “Emerging Moralities”, most directly addresses the title, arguably. It investigates religious responses to the AIDS crisis as it appeared, analyzing language and rhetoric as (mostly) Christian Americans evolved in their positions and perspectives, which at first viewed the new epidemic as little more than the punishment of God meted out to drug users and the sexually deviant. Responses changed “from condemnation to compassion” among liberal Christians and those in large urban areas with substantive gay populations who encountered the suffering first hand and en masse. In 1981 the medical world became aware of a peculiar disease epidemic confronting gay men especially (at first exclusively). And while it took some time to identify the cause and to realize that other populations were also disproportionately afflicted (e.g. drug users, Haitians), the virus became conflated with homosexuality to an extent that would effect public discourse and reaction through “ the long eighties”, as Petro labels the years from discovery of the virus to development of the first significantly effective treatment. Religion picked up on the association and churches found a new reason to trumpet traditional Christian sexual norms, prescribing abstinence before marriage and sexual expression within the context of heterosexual marriage as the answer, the only answer. HIV was not merely a new virus, a new STD, or a medical crisis but rather a sign of the “wrath of God” poured upon homosexuals, primarily, but also as punishment for drug use and promiscuity. Gay rights activism/lifestyles and the sexual revolution surely brought about the plague, they argued, and thus the disease “proved” conservative politics, demonstrating that immoral sexual behavior threatened not just individual sinners but the entire nation, as innocents also fell victim to AIDS by virtue of blood transfusions, unfaithful spouses, and so on. Homosexuals had once been conflated with communism and thus a “threat to the nation itself,” but suddenly a new disease simply confirmed this fact in the minds of conservatives, even as red panic waned and the Cold War ended.
For many LGBT and AIDS activists, conservative religion became “public enemy number one”, contributing to the neglect of gay religious history and the downplaying of religious support for LGBT individuals (a history recently corrected to a significant degree by Heather White and Reforming Sodom) and gay Christian agency itself—an imbalance that started with Stonewall commemorations and histories, skewed by thoroughly secular voices. By the time AIDS appears, American Christianity had already recast the meaning of “sodomy”, collapsed into a single and a-historical meaning equated with the 1901 neologism “homosexuality” (see White). Thus, through novel ideological/religious interpretations and discursive reformulations, contemporary conservatives cast AIDS as a moral crisis rather than a medical challenge, and one that substantiated Cold War political priorities and a new brand of Christian fundamentalism. If God wiped out Sodom because men practiced homosexuality, as the new interpretation posited, then the United States itself risked calamity of Biblical proportions with the rise of gay rights and counterculture sexual revolution, a threat wholly on par and parallel with communism and nuclear war. Still, both gay churches and less conservative religion came forward in the same years to supply succor to persons with AIDS and to uncouple the epidemic from homosexuality, and Petro uses secondary literature and archival research to document the MCC (gay churches) and other positive, caring Christian responses in the Black Church, among Southern Baptists, in pastoral care literature and practice, in new concern for AIDS in Africa (Saddleback Initiative), and among other voices and calls for unbiased Christian concern for the suffering.
The next three chapters further the examination of national discourse by focusing upon certain case studies, as it were, that represent larger tropes and religious history. Petro turns to medical discourse in chapter two (“Governing Authority: The Surgeon General and the Moral Politics of Public Health”) that ends up influenced by religious thought in a culture war that pits former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop against religious conservatives and liberal activists both. At a key moment in medical history, this devoutly religious physician faced the AIDS challenge as both an academically trained scientific medical specialist but also conservative Presbyterian. He chooses a middle ground, Petro notes. The chapter looks at Koop’s life and beliefs, the culture war he encountered, a “particular moral politics of public health” that arose, and his choices as a public official. It was a time when some called for the closing of gay bathhouses and the criminalization of AIDS patients, when conservatives prescribed abstinence only teaching in lieu of more practical and life-saving sex education programs in the Reagan 80s. Ultimately, Koop writes and publishes a substantive informational pamphlet, Understanding AIDS, made available to all Americans and that was designed to allay fears, disseminate accurate scientific knowledge, and promote both abstinence and fidelity but also safer sex practices and the importance of condom use. Conservatives felt betrayed by the religious doctor they had supported, but Koop felt his job was to promote general public health and to save lives rather than simply endorse a particular religious dogma. His concessions to heteronormative religious ideals (abstinence and fidelity) also drew criticism from the Left, though.
The last two chapters focus narrowly upon the Catholic Church, specifically in New York City. One might object to one religion consuming half the text, but Petro makes sure to include other religious voices woven into the narrative. As with the other chapters, he uses particular individuals or events as demonstrative and representative of larger goings on. Chapter three, “Ecclesiastical Authority: AIDS, Sexuality, and the Catholic Church” and chapter four, “Protest Religion! ACT UP, Religious Freedom, and the Ethics of Sex” both place Cardinal O’Conner, Archbishop of New York, at the center of the story, as representative of conservative thought and language as generated by religious hierarchies. Petro suggests he is a “central figure” because he heads one of the largest and most important diocese in the nation and one in the very midst of a city hardest hit by AIDS. O’Conner “reinscribes AIDS as a social epidemic”, focusing his crusade squarely against homosexuals, sexuality in general, sex education and condom use in particular, which he and other conservatives viewed as insufficient a safeguard against the virus yet a powerful inducement for immoral promiscuity. More specifically, the chapter reveals the culture war and counter-narratives as captured in debates between O’Conner and New York Governor Cuomo and other LGBT/AIDS activists and as Catholic discourse actually hardened over time from the publication of “The Many Faces of AIDS” (1987) to “Called to Compassion and Responsibility: A Response to the HIV/AIDS Crisis” (1989). The latter rejected American pluralism, strengthened church claims to moral authority, and “offered instead an uncompromising moral position” (135).
O’Conner and the conservatives did not monopolize the media, as privileged as their stance may have been in public discourse and even in the historiography. The hardening of moral lines faced criticism and alternate prescriptions for handling AIDS and even for Christian understanding of the epidemic and sexuality. Chapter four shifts to privilege the voices of LGBT/AIDS activism, which stood in such stark contrast to the Catholic Church with regard to expanded sex education, promotion of condom use, and end to homophobia. A radical group of AIDS activists staged a “die-in” inside O’Connor’s church during mass, dropping “dead” into the aisles, shouting slogans, waving “racy” signs, and actually desecrating the offering. Mostly, Petro notes, the notorious effort backfired, as even the mainstream and some LGBT/AIDS activists joined conservatives in viewing the stunt as extreme, disrespectful, and an unwarranted “attack” on religion and religious freedom. Yet, some of the activists themselves felt their protest had religious meaning, even redefining religion in a way, bringing the private and political into religious space just as Catholics seemed to impose their morality in the public sphere. The chapter captures this context and milieu, noting how Catholics were breaking the bounds of religious space by engaging in extreme pro-life protests of their own at health clinics, pushing their version of morality upon public heath initiatives and discourse and influencing politics and programs to the detriment of both homosexuals and persons with AIDS.
On the one hand, Petro’s work overall is a welcome addition to the historiography of both AIDS and LGBT religious history. On the other hand, it seems too short and anecdotal to truly satisfy. At 197 pages of text, including the Afterword, the text illuminates key case studies in national religious discourse vis-à-vis the emergence of AIDS in America, yet fully half the book privileges the Catholic church and rarely does the narrative leave the familiar geography of LGBT history—big, non-Southern coastal cities (New York especially). Given the fact that Petro received his BA degree at Georgia State University in Atlanta, it is surprising he does not make more effort to include the South or Bible Belt in any significant way. The book thus further equates gay history with NYC/LA/SF history, which is frustrating. Overall After the Wrath reads like someone “narrating the documents,” which can get dry, but it remains accessible reading for a non-specialist at least, which is positive. His language analysis seems more like articulating the evident rather than revealing much that is breakthrough, though this task required attention to be sure. He is surely aware of the book’s narrow scope and limitations, and After the Wrath deserves recognition for capturing over-arching national tropes and narratives, the general history of AIDS as it intersected religious discourse, development of both secular and religious thought and responses to HIV, and analysis of related language as it appeared in contemporary primary documents. Perhaps if Petro had taken one more year to conduct more research into other faiths, other locations/regions, and key players that received short shrift, like the gay-affirming Catholic organization, Dignity, the book would feel more complete. Occasionally the narrative also seems to belie a queer/progressive bent as well, but that is not a criticism. Overall it feels a bit like reading four journal articles, “a good start,” which is not to slight the author and the accomplishments in this, his first book.