Gay and Lesbian Issues and Psychology Review Editor Damien W. Riggs The Australian Psychological Society Ltd. ISSN 1833-4512 Gay and Lesbian Issues and Psychology Review Editor Damien W. Riggs, The University of Adelaide Editorial Board Graeme Kane, Eastern Drug and Alcohol Service Gordon A. Walker, Monash University Jim Malcom, The University of Western Sydney Ela Jodko, Private practice Liz Short, Victoria University Robert Morris, Private practice Jane Edwards, Spencer Gulf Rural Health School Brett Toelle, The University of Sydney Warrick Arblaster, Mental Health Policy Unit, ACT Murray Drummond, The University of South Australia General Information All submissions or enquires should be directed in the first instance to the Editor. Guidelines for submissions or for advertising within the Gay and Lesbian Issues in Psychology Review (‘the Review’) are provided on the final page of each issue. http://www.groups.psychology.org.au/glip/glip_review/ The Review is listed on Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory: http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ Aims and scope The Review is a peer-reviewed publication that is available online through the Australian Psychological Society website. Its remit is to encourage research that challenges the stereotypes and assumptions of pathology that have often inhered to research on lesbians and gay men (amongst others). The aim of the Review is thus to facilitate discussion over the direction of lesbian and gay psychology in Australia, and to provide a forum within which academics, practitioners and lay people may publish. The Review is open to a broad range of material, and especially welcomes research, commentary and reviews that critically evaluate the status quo in regards to lesbian and gay issues. The Review also seeks papers that redress the imbalance that has thus far focused on the issues facing white lesbians and gay men, to the exclusion of other sexual and racial groups. Copyright Whilst the Review is a peer-reviewed, ISSN registered journal, in the interest of fair practice the copyright of work published remains with the author. However, the Review requests that work published elsewhere acknowledges that it was originally published in the Review, and that the same piece of work is not published for free elsewhere online. Upon submitting a manuscript for publication in the Review, contributing authors warrant that they have not already had the manuscript published elsewhere, and that they have the appropriate permission to reproduce any copyrighted material (e.g., diagrams) that forms part of their manuscript. Publications of the Society are distributed to various other publications for review and abstracting purposes. In addition, the Society has contractual agreements with various secondary publishers for the republication, in hard copy, microfilm or digital forms, of individual articles and journal issues as a whole. Upon acceptance of their manuscripts by the Society for publication in this Review, authors who retain copyright in their work are deemed to have licensed the Society to reproduce their works, as they appear in the Review, through secondary publication. Disclaimer Work published within the Review does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Australian Psychological Society. Whilst the APS supports the work of the Gay and Lesbian Issues and Psychology Interest Group, it also adheres to its own standards for practice and research that may at times conflict with those of the Review. Gay and Lesbian Issues and Psychology Review Volume 3 Number 2 Contents Editorial 77 Damien W. Riggs Articles Queering the representation of the masculine ‘West’ in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain 79 Janet A. McDonald Is there any rational basis for the existence of barriers against same-sex parenting? An analysis of Australian adoption and family law 86 Phillip Duffey Border crossings? White queer spirituality and Asian religion: A first person account 97 Victor Marsh Religions beliefs or equal rights? A narrative analysis of the same-sex marriage debate 109 Jennifer N. Gill The long and the short of it: Gay men’s perceptions of penis size 121 Murray J.N. Drummond and Shaun M. Filiault Commentaries Under the radar: And the necessity for courage 130 John Ryan Lesbian and gay bodies in queer spaces 134 Sharon Chalmers Book Reviews Chasing Adonis: Gay men and the pursuit of perfection 141 Shaun M. Filiault Bi men: Coming out every which way 143 Adrian Booth Homosexuality: The use of scientific research in the church’s moral debate 145 Anthony Venn-Brown Advertisements and Calls for Papers Queer Corner: An email based information distribution and awareness raising tool GLIP Review: Mental health and LGBT people Feminism & Psychology: Negotiating sexualities in the higher education classroom Gay & Lesbian Issues and Psychology Review, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2007 EDITORIAL DAMIEN W. RIGGS It seems like a long time since we have had a issue with her insightful and exciting general issue of GLIP Review : April 2006 to be examination of representations of masculinity precise. Since then we have had three wonderful and the West within the film Brokeback special issues – the first on LGBT ageing edited Mountain. Importantly, McDonald explores the by Jo Harrison and myself, the second on intersections of the characters, the actors, and methodological, theoretical and ethical issues in the filmmakers in the production of a text that lesbian and gay psychology, and the third on queers the Western genre at the very same time parenting, family issues and heteronormativity, as it asserts its normative impulses. edited by Liz Short and myself. These special issues highlight the broad areas of research Moving to a quite different, yet not unrelated, currently being conducted in Australia and area of focus, Phillip Duffey provides an beyond in specific subfields of lesbian and gay extensive elaboration of Australian adoption law psychology, and also draw attention to the as it pertains to same-sex attracted people, and interdisciplinary nature of the field. explores the implications of this for international adoptions and judgments within family law as Similarly, this issue of GLIP Review highlights they relate to same-sex families. In a context of the broad range of papers that are submitted to ongoing international debates and changes to the journal on a regular basis, and which come legislation about same-sex adoption, Duffey’s from as diverse fields as religion studies, legal paper is timely and much needed. studies, drama studies and the social sciences. The importance of lesbian and gay psychology, Victor Marsh then takes up the politics of voice and it gradual broadening out towards what has by exploring what it means to engage with Asian been termed LGBTQ psychologies (Clarke & religions as a white queer man. His work, Peel, 2007), is largely due to its ability to drawing as it does from his own experience, and engage with such a range of disciplinary fields teamed with an insightful analysis of a broad and theoretical approaches. Such a breadth of range of previous research and traditions, foci occurs largely as a result of the ongoing results in an important piece of writing that marginalisation of issues pertaining to LGBT spans the academic, literary and auto- people within the academy, and the continued biographical. denial of rights to LGBT people both within Australia and internationally. In other words, it is Murray J.N. Drummond and Shaun M. Filiault necessary to engage across discriplines in order then shift our attention from voices to bodies to present multiple challenges to, and (and their intersections) in their analysis of gay interrogations of, heternormativity. men’s talk about penis size and masculinity. Drummond and Filiault’s research reminds us Important also to the field of lesbian and gay that whilst social stereotypes about gay men psychology is the politics of voice. As the papers may promote a uniform understanding of gay and commentaries in this issue demonstrate, men’s relationship to their own and other men’s those writing within the field speak from a range genitalia, these relationships are complex and of identity positions, and utilise these in various must be situated within social contexts wherein ways within their work. As work in the field of particular forms of masculinity are valorised. queer theory continues to demonstrate, the ‘queering’ of psychology occurs not simply by In the final paper in the article section, written those LGBT people who challenge from within the US context, Jennifer N. Gill heteronormativity, but also by people who utilises a narrative analysis to examine pro- and identify as heterosexual and actively resist or anti-same-sex marriage debates. Gill highlights critique the normalising tendencies of academic the narrative stability of the pro argument in research. contrast with the anti argument that fails to thoroughly produce narrative coherence. Gill This issue of the journal includes five articles, also reminds us of the complexity of these two commentaries and three book reviews. In debates not only amongst heterosexual people, regards to articles, Janet A. McDonald opens the but also within LGBT communities. ISSN 1833-4512 © 2007 Author and Gay & Lesbian Issues and Psychology Interest Group of the Australian Psychological Society RIGGS: EDITORIAL In regards to the two commentaries, it is experiences of bisexual men, and one on the important to note, as has been the case intersections of sexuality and religion. throughout the course of the publication of the Review, commentaries, whilst often representing The issue concludes with two calls for papers, shorter pieces of work, are no less rigorous or one of which is for the August 2008 issue of theoretical in their outlook. Whilst some of the GLIP Review. Readers are invited to consider commentaries published have included personal submitting work for this as it will no doubt be an reflections on current issues, most have included important and widely read issue. important theoretical and empirical insights that reflect the breadth of academic, peer-reviewed On the whole, this general issue coheres around research in Australia.