The discourse of the new sciences of homosexuality inter acts with, reprodu
ces, and sometimes challenges other discourses that inform and intersect it
-popular discussions of scientific discoveries, legal discourse, debates ab
out gay and lesbian identity, and religious discourse. Despite their differ
ent intentions and vocabularies, what links the discourse of the Christian
right to that of contemporary sexology research and its popularized version
s is its reproduction of a binary gender system, in which women are figured
as both within and outside of "nature." Researchers in gay, lesbian, and b
isexual sexuality can make a significant contribution by exposing the ways
their research contends with discursive practices that have a context and a
history (in connections between Aquinas's theology and Aristotle's science
, for example). The narrative, rooted in traditional Christian theology and
early Western science, that produces gender as binary and heterosexuality
as normative can be rewritten to reveal the constructedness of both gender
and sexuality.