01/02/2017
Constitutional scholar Stone (Perilous Times) explores how the United States has regulated human sexuality from the colonial period to the present day. Beginning with a brief discussion of attitudes toward sexuality in the ancient world, medieval Europe, England, and Puritan New England, the author then outlines the Enlightenment-era concerns regarding government, religion, and individual freedom that shaped the U.S. constitutional law, and the lasting influence of the Second Great Awakening on morality laws. After providing this background, the work combines a thematic and roughly chronological survey of Christian attitudes toward, and U.S. legal treatment of, three areas of human sexuality: sexual speech and obscenity, abortion and contraception, and homosexual acts and identity. This title is a commanding synthesis of scholarship on over two centuries of American legal debate and practice regarding these issues, and would work well as the core text for a course of the subject. Less developed is the history of Christian attitudes regarding sexuality, with the work repeatedly situating American Christianity in opposition to more tolerant secular values. The work also lacks any substantive discussion of non-Christian religious approaches to sexuality and liberty. Despite these limitations, Stone’s analysis is highly recommended for anyone seeking an introduction to the history of U.S. law and sexual expression. (Mar.)
Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America's Origins to the Twenty-First Century
Narrated by William Dufris
Geoffrey R. StoneUnabridged — 20 hours, 41 minutes
Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America's Origins to the Twenty-First Century
Narrated by William Dufris
Geoffrey R. StoneUnabridged — 20 hours, 41 minutes
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Editorial Reviews
"This fascinating account of how sexual mores, religion, and law have intersected or—more often—collided throughout American history is really about even more than that. It’s about the role of law in maintaining a civil society in a diverse twenty-first-century America, and a call to the Supreme Court to step up to the challenge."
"A comprehensive history and analysis of our law's fitful and frequently schizophrenic treatment of sex…A story that is both fascinating and maddening…This book brings us all the way up to the controversies of our day (including gay marriage) and offers tantalizing glimpses of some of the legal battles that lie ahead…Those interested in adding historical context to their thinking about these hot button issues would be well-advised to add Stone's book to their summer reading list."
"Sex, which has simultaneously inspired and eluded regulation through the ages, has been the focus of many of our greatest constitutional controversies. No one is better suited than the always erudite and lucid Geoffrey Stone to provide the panoramic treatment that the subject deserves. Unless you are the rare person who has no interest in either the Constitution or sex, you will want to read this book."
"Magnificent and monumental—a stunning blend of dispassionate analysis and deep moral conviction. Think that the United States was born as a Christian nation? Think again."
"A volume of lasting significance that quickly will become essential reading not only for law students and scholars but for all who want to better understand sweeping cultural transformations that continue to roil society."
"A superb examination of the history of how the law has regulated sexual behavior and sexual expression from the ancient world to today."
"This masterpiece is the rarest of combinations: a page-turner that is also a magisterial font of wisdom."
"Writing confidently and expertly about several centuries of American laws regulating sex, Stone shows that the line between moral and religious reasoning was almost always illusory. . . . Sex and the Constitution is most persuasive when Stone turns to America, and his comprehensive knowledge of constitutional law is put on full display. He is especially good on the eighteenth century, bringing a bracing and much-needed dose of reality about the Founders’ views of sexuality. . . . [A] very important book."
11/15/2017
Constitutional scholar Stone (Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, Univ. of Chicago Law Sch.) tackles his subject with serious intent and novelistic sweep, along the way dispatching the notion that the nation's founders cared about sexual behavior. Obscenity wasn't illegal back then, and the criminal code didn't consider abortion a criminal matter until the midpoint of pregnancy. Then as Americans settled in for the long haul, their religious fervor sparked laws intended to punish non-status quo sexual conduct—with women being the frequent target of moral arbiters. Stone is aided by his narrator, William Dufris, who deftly evokes a host of judges, crusaders, professional prudes, and sexual outlaws. VERDICT A work this wide-ranging risks turning ramshackle; not so with this duo in charge. ["The definitive work on the topic": LJ 2/15/17 starred review of the Liveright: Norton hc.]—Kelly Sinclair, Temple P.L., TX
★ 02/15/2017
In this impressive study, renowned constitutional scholar Stone (Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, Univ. of Chicago Law Sch.; Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime) investigates the evolving nature of sexual mores as they are shaped by religion and the law. Stone accomplishes this gargantuan, decadelong project through assiduous interdisciplinary research, organizing the material into six parts: "Ancestors," "Founders," "Moralists," "Judges: Sexual Expression and the Constitution," "Judges: Reproductive Freedom and the Constitution," and "Judges: Sexual Orientation and the Constitution." Part 1 is a history of sex and religion from antiquity through the Enlightenment. Devoting attention to U.S. founders and the creation of the Constitution, Part 2 explores the history of sexual mores and religion in early America. Part 3 examines the role of Protestant "moralism," particularly as it has shaped beliefs about homosexuality. The next two sections examine the role of judicial decision-making regarding sexual expression, reproductive freedom, and sexual orientation. VERDICT The definitive work on the topic and indispensable for readers of Sarah Barringer Gordon's The Spirit of the Law. [See Prepub Alert, 9/12/16.]—Lynne Maxwell, West Virginia Univ. Coll. of Law Lib., Morgantown
★ 2017-01-04
Sexual expression, obscenity, contraception, and abortion are the focus of this wide-ranging legal, political, and social history.Stone (Law/Univ. of Chicago; Speaking Out!: Reflections on Law, Liberty and Justice, 2010, etc.), a constitutional scholar whose previous books include an award-winning history of free speech, offers a broad, fascinating overview of the nation's shifting, often incendiary, attitudes toward sexuality and the impact of those attitudes on politics and law. Colonists "clearly and emphatically rejected" Puritans' repressive views about sex, and the country's founders, Stone asserts, had no interest in regulating sexuality nor in promoting Christianity. Most were "broad-minded skeptics who viewed religious passion as divisive and irrational, and who consistently challenged, both publicly and privately, traditional Christian dogma." The claim that America is a "Christian nation" originated in the Second Great Awakening, which swept the country from the 1790s to the 1840s. At a time of unsettling social change, "charismatic preachers" excited religious passions that infused "politics, culture, education, relations between the sexes, attitudes about sex," and, most significantly, views on the relationship between religion and government. Believing sex to be sinful, evangelicals mounted a campaign against masturbation and contraception; without fear of pregnancy, they claimed, women's inherent lasciviousness would be uncontrollable. After the Civil War, those ideas were taken up by Anthony Comstock, who policed sexuality with unabated vigor, specifically the dissemination of obscene material through the postal service; obscenity laws persisted even after his death in 1915. In the 1970s, Protestant fundamentalists incited a third awakening, embraced by the Republican Party that coveted the voting power of the Moral Majority. Stone enlivens his narrative with deft portraits of the many judges involved in cases on obscenity, contraception, abortion, and same-sex marriage. Some Supreme Court justices, appointed to uphold the views of the Christian right, disappointed their constituencies. The author applauds decisions that reflect the "protection of human dignity and equality" and believes, maybe too optimistically, that religious groups are now "on the defensive." A compelling history of a nation grappling with the moral and legal freedoms that the founders strived to ensure.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940171359751 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HighBridge Company |
| Publication date: | 03/21/2017 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Sales rank: | 1,189,064 |
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