was considered exotic, macho, and incredibly romantic.

Up and across I
slithered non-stop in a flight from reality, until 1963, when the twist suddenly put a damper on my terpsichorean talents.
Still, there were grand balls and parties in Paris, London, and New York,
with orchestras that played only music
to dance to, although becoming fewer
and fewer as I got older and older. The
end came when I went to a grand ducal
house for a ball in 1987, and
the only music offered was the
cacophony of acid rock. You
know the style. One crouches
down, one's hips and pelvis
work overtime like an Egyptian
belly dancer's, one's knees are
bent as if one were lifting
weights, and all this without
touchingat times not even seeing
the object of one's desire. If this is
dancing, I'm a banana.
But back to Annabel's. One of the
pleasures of my life is to finish a good
dinner, drain a good glass of wine, and
suddenly hear the haunting rhythm of
"Begin the Beguine" or "Night and
Day." It is then time for expressing
and communicating emotion through
movement. And there's a bonus. Although I've been known to have problems speaking when under the influence, drink has never inhibited my
dancing. In fact dancing helps me recover my equilibrium. I can imagine
someone falling down while dancing
the onanist way but never while dancing the waltz or the tango.
D

BOOKS IN BRIEF
Bridging the Sacred and the Secular:
Selected Writings of John Courtney
Murray, SJ, edited by J. Leon Hooper,
SJ (Georgetown, 390 pp., $55)

OHN Courtney Murray, the intellectual architect of the Second

Vatican Council's historic Declaration on Religious Freedom, was the
pre-eminent public theologian of twentieth-century American Catholicism.
This new volume, only the second collection of Murray's writing to be published since his untimely death in
1967, brings together more than thirty
of Murray's seminal essays and addresses on {among other topics) religious liberty, freedom of speech, the
Christian idea of education, religious

ecumenism, natural-law theory, and

Catholic social thought on war and
peace. Especially notable is his 1962
essay on "Federal Aid to Church-Related Schools," one of the last (and most
important) of his remarkably prescient
essays on church-state relations in
America, Recognizing the legitimate
(but then unpopular) claim of Catholic
and Orthodox Jewish groups seeking
government support for their parochial
schools, that "the religious freedom of
their members would be diminished" if such support
were denied, Murray bolstered
their contention that "it was in
the public interest for the government to respect the freedom of parental choice, especially when religious beliefs
motivate that choice." Liberal
Jewish and Catholic opponents of
"school choice" would do well to reflect
upon this compelhng argument today.
This insightful collection, which does
much to confirm and illuminate the enduring relevance of Murray's thought
to the continuing debate on the religious and moral dimensions of
American public life, should be read by
believers, Christian and Jewish alike.
DAVIU DALIN

The Science of Desire: The Search for

the Gay Gene and the Biology of Behavior, by Dean Hamer and Peter Copeland (Simon & Schuster, 272 pp.. $23)

CIENTIFIC papers are impersonal, specialized communications in which facts and arguments are compressed, while the
methods used to obtain the facts, and
the background for the arguments
precedents, logic, mathematicsare
given in detail, so that the conclusions
may be tested. Non-scientists may not
see it thus; a fashion (e.g., among some
who do "science studies") is to decry
such writing as devious, because it
does not tell the story "as it really happened." Here is an opportunity to compare some hard science, communicated
in a paper that became a cause celebre,
with "what really happened." Elegant
and demanding, the paper is reprinted
here from Science, April 1993; the book
recounts, and then meditates upon the
significance of, the storyas it happened. The conclusion is that at least
one gene, located on the X chromosome, contributes to the sexual orientation of males, i.e., that male homoA P R I L

sexuality is to some extent inherited,

and through the mother. This is quite
as solid, and as unsurprising, as the
conclusion that our genes determine
the range of heights our children can
attain. The full story does nothing to
alter that view; but it does illuminate
the arts of behavioral and molecular
genetics. This conclusion has caused
fits among those on both ends of the
political spectrum who feel science
should be subordinated to politics.
Would that books like this were read
by the paroxysm-prone; but they're
not. Fulminations and T-shirt slogans
("Xq28THANKS, MOM!") are more fun.
PAUL R. GROSS

"Advocacy"
Time editor Charles Alexander says
that on environmental issues Time
has "crossed the boundary from
news reporting to advocacy."
NBC's Andrea Mitchell says,
"clearly the networks have made
that decision now, where you'd have
to call it advocacy."
The Washington Posts's Ben
Bradlee commented. "I don't think
there's any danger in doing what
you suggest. There's a minor danger in saying it, . ,"

Fight this bias!

Send for inlormation on how you can help.
Name
Slreel
Cily, Slale, Zip

Malt
to:

3 , 1995

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