WHILE JAKOBSEN AND Pellegrini’s book does a lot of academic hypothesizing — much of it is cast in terms of the " ideal state, " a method unlikely to win constitutional arguments — the gay-rights movement can put a good deal of their work to practical use. The right to privacy (as opposed to the right to be gay in public) has long been problematic for the gay movement. Not only does it restrict a basic concept of citizenship (if you can’t be safe acting " gay " in public because you are afraid of getting beaten up, you are not really a full citizen), but it is sometimes not even granted: remember, John Lawrence of Lawrence v. Texas, the sodomy-law case argued before the US Supreme Court last month, was arrested in his own bedroom for having gay sex with another man. Keeping this in mind, Jakobsen and Pellegrini argue that while privacy is an important constitutional principle, it does not on its own really get to the heart of the issue. A democracy should foster all forms of freedom; in addition to freedom of association, speech, and religion, a democracy should foster sexual freedom, which is the " freedom to form human relationships, " as they put it.

The theme running through Love the Sin is that gay people need to live as gay people in the public world. For Jakobsen and Pellegrini, this is nearly impossible because so many aspects of American culture are based on religiously influenced ideas about sexuality. Even more troubling, the gay movement is afraid to confront these ideas forthrightly, mainly because it’s too busy trying to fit into the accepted mainstream rather than broadening its legal and social thinking. Thus, up until now the movement has preferred not to talk about sexuality, gay sex, or even the importance of pleasure in people’s lives. This, in Jakobsen and Pellegrini’s eyes, is a big mistake. After all, how can you separate queer sex from being queer? If the movement refuses to talk about the importance of sexuality in the lives of gay people, how can it ever defend the right to be gay? What has happened is that " gay identity " may be protected by the courts (as it was in Romer), but " homosexual conduct " certainly is not (as we have seen in Hardwick).

In proposing to break this stalemate, Love the Sin makes surprising and often startling connections between sexual freedom and religious freedom. Jakobsen and Pellegrini argue that while religious traditions — and it is important to realize that there are many Christian traditions, not a monolithic one — cannot be used as the basis for legal statutes, America needs more religious freedom, not less. In a wonderful analogy, Jakobsen and Pellegrini note that " when it comes to religion, the principles of the First Amendment do not protect religious identity; they are supposed to protect religious practice. " Anyone can identify as Catholic or Jewish, but the genius of our legal system is that they have the right — the freedom — to publicly practice these beliefs, which are essential to their identity. So it should be with homosexuality. And just as we need to have a broader range of religious freedom — for instance, the freedom to practice one’s atheism completely and to see it protected by law — we need to have a broader range of sexual freedom as well.

Love the Sin may be a hard sell for many gay people. Not only will those who press for tolerance find their thinking questioned, but queer radicals and secularists who would rather demonize religion — or just not think about it — will also be challenged. But as Jakobsen and Pellegrini remind us, " Progressive politics in the United States has not always been uniformly ‘against’ religion. Just think of the rich history of progressive movements for African American civil rights that were grounded in the Black Church, the movements for economic justice grounded in the Catholic worker movement in the United States and the Catholic based communities in Central America, the longstanding tradition of Jewish progressive politics, and the Quaker movements on behalf of abolition and against war. " The problem with religion in America, they argue, is not that it is there, but that the cultural domination of a certain type of Protestantism has become so ingrained in American culture that there is little true freedom for a wider range of belief. Likewise, the legal and cultural influence of a narrow form of Protestantism has deeply affected how Americans view sexual freedom as well — change the first and the other will follow.

With their book, Janet Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini have given the gay-rights movement a decidedly powerful kick in the pants to get it thinking — and arguing — in new ways. There is no question that however the courts decide Lawrence v. Texas or the Massachusetts gay-marriage case Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, more cases will follow. At heart, Love the Sin is about shaking up the system and thinking harder, more creatively, and with more vision. After all, fighting a long hard fight just to be tolerated really isn’t good enough for queers — or for anyone.

Michael Bronski can be reached at mabronski@aol.com