The Stranger Next Door, by Arlene Stein
Every liberal ought to read this sociological study of a successful Christian-right, local initiative in a small Oregon town. In Timbertown (a pseudonym), this initiative, later overturned by the courts, aimed "to prevent antidiscrimination protection for gays and lesbians and to prohibit government spending to promote homosexuality." Arlene Stein provides an important depiction of life in a town which became a vortex of national and local issues.
The Timbertown initiative was largely symbolic, Stein argues. There were "few visible signs of queer life" in the town, and yet homosexuality became a primary issue for the community's self-definition. Why was this so? Stein's response to this question examines how sexuality, especially homosexuality, can become a loaded symbol for people's anxieties about a changing world. She examines the deep divisions which result, the way the community consequently defines itself, and what such things tell us about how we live together in a contested moral order.
Stein ignores neither the economic nor the cultural issues before this community. But on the homosexual initiative, she focuses on an inclusion/exclusion dynamic: "Social groups know who they are in large measure by knowing who they are not. Timbertown's conservative Protestants defined themselves in opposition to nonbelievers, homosexuals, radical feminists, and, in subtle ways, people of color."
