[7] Nussbaum called Halperin and Winkler "judicious and discriminating classical scholars" with a "mastery of the relevant types of evidence" superior to that of Foucault.

"[6] One Hundred Years of Homosexuality was reviewed in the New York Native,[8] and received subsequent discussions there, one of which presented the book alongside Winkler's The Constraints of Desire (1990).

[22] The journalist Neil Miller commended the book for its lucidity,[23] while the literature scholar Leonard Barkan called it "brilliant".

[24] In Forms of Desire (1990), the philosopher Edward Stein called Halperin's reservations about scientific research "provocative and highly contentious".

[25] In The Mismeasure of Desire (1999), Stein wrote that Halperin's views about the development of contemporary categories of sexual orientation are not universally shared: while Halperin maintains that the word "homosexual" was coined by Karl-Maria Kertbeny in 1869 and attaches significance to this event, others, such as John Boswell, argue that the concept the word refers to has existed for centuries.

Dowsett saw Halperin's views as following those of both Foucault and the poet and literary critic John Addington Symonds, maintaining that all three present a censored and overly idealized picture of homosexuality and sexual activity in general.

[30] The economist Richard Posner described Halperin's view that homosexuality was "invented" by European psychiatrists as a thesis representative of social constructionism.

[32] Timothy F. Murphy wrote in Gay Science (1997) that while Halperin claims that erotic preferences are no more fundamental than dietary preferences and should therefore be explained in cultural rather than biological terms, dietary habits themselves can be explained partly in terms of inherent human needs for proteins, fats, and sugars.

He criticized Halperin for claiming that the discovery of a gene for homosexuality would refute his ideas about the cultural determination of sexual object-choice, since social constructionism can be interpreted as claiming that sexual orientation is inevitably influenced by social forces and thus does not rule out scientific investigation of the origins of homosexuality.