The Stranger Next Door: The Story of a Small Community's Battle over Sex, Faith, and Civil Rights Book

"By combining the meticulousness of an ethnographer with a writer's commitment to storytelling, Stein has written a book that's surprisingly compelling-or, better, compelling because it's surprising."
-David L. Kirp, The Nation

Winner of the 2001 Ruth Benedict Award

In a book that combines strong on-the-ground research and lucid analysis with a novelist's imaginative sympathy, Arlene Stein sets out to discover why a small town with no apparent queer population became the site of a bitter battle over gay rights.

"A fascinating look at the psychology of fear and persuasion."
-Monica Drake, The Oregonian

"Every liberal ought to read this. . . . Arlene Stein provides an important depiction of life in a town which became a vortex of national and local issues."
-Tex Sample, Christian Century

"What's especially valuable about Stein's book is her detailed look at each individual's take on the meaning of the campaign and her patient exploration of the wide variety of forces shifting the ground of these people's lives."
-E. J. Graff, American Prospect

"This book displays interpretive sociology at its best."
-Robert N. Bellah, coauthor of Habits of the Heart and The Good Society

"In her cogent analysis of just how sickeningly simple it is to create an 'other,' a 'stranger' upon whom blame for our problems may be shifted, Stein has touched to the very heart of the social upheaval in America today."
-Dan Hays, Salem (Oreg.) Statesman-Journal

Arlene Stein is associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University. She has written for The Nation, The Oregonian, and Newsday, among other publications, and is the author of Sex and Sensibility: Stories of a Lesbian Generation and editor of Sisters, Sexperts, Queers.

Publishers Weekly

"To conservative Christians, homosexuality was sinful, unnatural, against God and family... but to the vast majority, who believed that religion--and sex--should be kept private, these words sounded intolerant... even hateful," writes Stein in this astute social analysis of how a small Oregon community dealt with an early 1990s political referendum to prohibit "special rights" for homosexuals. A Jewish lesbian, Stein (Sisters, Sexperts, Queers) writes as both a community insider and outsider, drawing upon personal observation, media analysis and interviews with 50 of the town's residents to sympathetically and critically reveal how both sides, and those caught in the middle, responded to this culture war. She conjures a complex portrait of people under stress, attributing much of the community's conservatism to the flagging economy caused by the weakening of the timber industry in the 1980s. Stein is best when articulating and exploring the myriad paradoxes and contradictions of the situation. Her most striking observation is that while conservative Christian organizers from outside Timbertown created widespread fear of a gay takeover, the town itself had no visible homosexual community, and most of its gay citizens were well integrated and accepted within the social fabric. A careful observer and writer, Stein uses traditional sociological methodology to reach conclusions about the boundaries of tolerance that are similar to those in Beth Loffreda's recent work of straightforward reportage on the murder of a young gay man in Wyoming, Losing Matt Shephard (Forecasts, July 31). (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.