How Sex Became a Civil Liberty

How Sex Became a Civil Liberty

Author: Leigh Ann Wheeler

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-12-01

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 0199987084

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How Sex Became a Civil Liberty is the first book to show how and why we have come to see sexual expression, sexual practice, and sexual privacy as fundamental rights. Using rich archival sources and oral interviews, historian Leigh Ann Wheeler shows how the private lives of women and men in the American Civil Liberties Union shaped their understanding of sexual rights as they built the constitutional foundation for the twentieth-century's sexual revolutions. Wheeler introduces readers to a number of fascinating figures, including ACLU founders Crystal Eastman and Roger Baldwin; nudists, victims of involuntary sterilization, and others who appealed to the organization for help; as well as attorneys like Dorothy Kenyon, Harriet Pilpel, and Melvin Wulf, who pushed the ACLU to tackle such controversial issues as abortion and homosexuality. It demonstrates how their work with the American Birth Control League, Planned Parenthood Federation, Kinsey Institute, Playboy magazine, and other organizations influenced the ACLU's agenda. Wheeler explores the ACLU's prominent role in nearly every major court decision related to sexuality while examining how the ACLU also promoted its agenda through grassroots activism, political action, and public education. She shows how the ACLU helped to collapse distinctions between public and private in ways that privileged access to sexual expression over protection from it. Thanks largely to the organization's work, abortion and birth control are legal, coerced sterilization is rare, sexually explicit material is readily available, and gay rights are becoming a reality. But this book does not simply applaud the creation of a sex-saturated culture and the arming of citizens with sexual rights; it shows how hard-won rights for some often impinged upon freedoms held dear by others.


How Sex Became a Civil Liberty

How Sex Became a Civil Liberty

Author: Leigh Ann Wheeler

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 0190206527

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How Sex Became a Civil Liberty shows how we came to see sexual expression, sexual practice, and sexual privacy as fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, thanks to the work of ACLU leaders and attorneys who forged legal principles that advanced the sexual revolution.


The Man Who Hated Women

The Man Who Hated Women

Author: Amy Sohn

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2021-07-06

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1250174821

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Smithsonian Magazine, 10 Best History Books of 2021 • "Fascinating . . . Purity is in the mind of the beholder, but beware the man who vows to protect yours.” —Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker Anthony Comstock, special agent to the U.S. Post Office, was one of the most important men in the lives of nineteenth-century women. His eponymous law, passed in 1873, penalized the mailing of contraception and obscenity with long sentences and steep fines. The word Comstockery came to connote repression and prudery. Between 1873 and Comstock’s death in 1915, eight remarkable women were charged with violating state and federal Comstock laws. These “sex radicals” supported contraception, sexual education, gender equality, and women’s right to pleasure. They took on the fearsome censor in explicit, personal writing, seeking to redefine work, family, marriage, and love for a bold new era. In The Man Who Hated Women, Amy Sohn tells the overlooked story of their valiant attempts to fight Comstock in court and in the press. They were publishers, writers, and doctors, and they included the first woman presidential candidate, Victoria C. Woodhull; the virgin sexologist Ida C. Craddock; and the anarchist Emma Goldman. In their willingness to oppose a monomaniac who viewed reproductive rights as a threat to the American family, the sex radicals paved the way for second-wave feminism. Risking imprisonment and death, they redefined birth control access as a civil liberty. The Man Who Hated Women brings these women’s stories to vivid life, recounting their personal and romantic travails alongside their political battles. Without them, there would be no Pill, no Planned Parenthood, no Roe v. Wade. This is the forgotten history of the women who waged war to control their bodies.


The Limits to Union

The Limits to Union

Author: Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2004-07-20

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 0472030493

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Revised and updated to include the most current information on same-sex marriage, The Limits to Union documents a legal struggle at its moment of greatest historical importance. "The Limits to Union is a superb book about the complexities of recent political struggles over same-sex marriage. Goldberg-Hiller offers a sophisticated account of egalitarian rights advocacy and the reaction it has generated from established majorities animated by a 'new common sense' of exclusionary sovereign authority. The author's analysis is multidimensional and nuanced, but the core argument is bold, important, and well-supported. I recommend it very highly to everyone interested in understanding the character, possibilities, and constraints of civil rights amid our contemporary culture wars." -Michael McCann, author of Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization "In this excellent book, Goldberg-Hiller uses Hawaii's experience to examine the interaction between courts and the political system. . . . Relying on briefs, legislative statements, and interviews with activists from both sides of the question, he views this familiar debate . . . through the unfamiliar prism of gay marriage, which allows him to gauge the viability and the pliability of the American civil rights ideal, and how gay and lesbian issues fit (or don't fit) within that ideal." -Willian Heinzen, New York Law Journal "Goldberg-Hiller presents the history of the same-sex marriage question since it first sparked debate in Hawaii. He follows the shifting debate through court cases, state propositions, and state and federal legislatures, considering questions about the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act and the concept of equal protection under the law for gays and lesbians. This detailed treatment of the legal issues surrounding same-sex marriages is highly recommended." -R. L. Abbott, University of Evansville "[A] valuable contribution to the field, situating the gay marriage debate in broader contexts of theory, law and practice. [S]ame-sex marriage is an important issue...that finds itself caught in the friction points of much larger debates over the nature of rights, the limits of sovereignty and the proper role of courts and law in a democratic society. The Limits to Union should therefore be of interest even to those who do not think of themselves as interested in gay and lesbian rights issues." -Evan Gerstmann, Loyola Marymount University, Law and Politics Book Review


American Government 3e

American Government 3e

Author: Glen Krutz

Publisher:

Published: 2023-05-12

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781738998470

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Black & white print. American Government 3e aligns with the topics and objectives of many government courses. Faculty involved in the project have endeavored to make government workings, issues, debates, and impacts meaningful and memorable to students while maintaining the conceptual coverage and rigor inherent in the subject. With this objective in mind, the content of this textbook has been developed and arranged to provide a logical progression from the fundamental principles of institutional design at the founding, to avenues of political participation, to thorough coverage of the political structures that constitute American government. The book builds upon what students have already learned and emphasizes connections between topics as well as between theory and applications. The goal of each section is to enable students not just to recognize concepts, but to work with them in ways that will be useful in later courses, future careers, and as engaged citizens. In order to help students understand the ways that government, society, and individuals interconnect, the revision includes more examples and details regarding the lived experiences of diverse groups and communities within the United States. The authors and reviewers sought to strike a balance between confronting the negative and harmful elements of American government, history, and current events, while demonstrating progress in overcoming them. In doing so, the approach seeks to provide instructors with ample opportunities to open discussions, extend and update concepts, and drive deeper engagement.


Defending Pornography

Defending Pornography

Author: Nadine Strossen

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2024-03-05

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1479830798

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Named a Notable Book by The New York Times Book Review in 1995, Defending Pornography examines a key question that has divided feminists for decades: is censoring pornography good or bad for women? Nadine Strossen makes a powerful case that increasing government power to censor sexual expression, beyond the limits that the First Amendment sensibly permits (for example, outlawing child pornography) would do more harm than good for women and others who have traditionally been marginalized due to sex or gender, She explains how the very anti-porn laws pushed by some feminists have led to the censorship of LGBTQ+ and feminist works, and she examines the startling connections between anti-porn feminists and right-wing fundamentalists. In an illuminating new Preface, Strossen lays out the multiple current assaults on sexual expression, which continue to come from across the ideological spectrum. She shows that freedom for such expression remains an essential prerequisite for the equality, safety, and dignity of women and sexual/gender minorities.


The New Politics of Sex

The New Politics of Sex

Author: Stephen Baskerville

Publisher:

Published: 2017-07-04

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 9781621382898

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Stephen Baskerville's new work is essential to understanding the impact of the ideology of sex not only on the family and other social institutions, but also on government, the criminal justice system, and the global political environment. He goes behind slogans of left and right to examine the trends that media and scholars frequently ignore.


Because of Sex

Because of Sex

Author: Gillian Thomas

Publisher: Picador USA

Published: 2017-08-08

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1250138086

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A compelling look at ten of the most important Supreme Court cases defining women’s rights on the job, as told by the brave women who brought the cases to court


Sexual Justice

Sexual Justice

Author: Alexandra Brodsky

Publisher: Metropolitan Books

Published: 2021-08-24

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1250262534

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A pathbreaking work for the next stage of the #MeToo movement, showing how we can address sexual harms with fairness to both victims and the accused, and exposing the sexism that shapes today's contentious debates about due process Over the past few years, a remarkable number of sexual harassment victims have come forward with their stories, demanding consequences for their assailants and broad societal change. Each prominent allegation, however, has also set off a wave of questions – some posed in good faith, some distinctly not – about the rights of the accused. The national conversation has grown polarized, inflamed by a public narrative that wrongly presents feminism and fair process as warring interests. Sexual Justice is an intervention, pointing the way to common ground. Drawing on core principles of civil rights law, and the personal experiences of victims and the accused, Alexandra Brodsky details how schools, workplaces, and other institutions can – indeed, must – address sexual harms in ways fair to all. She shows why these allegations cannot be left to police and prosecutors alone, and outlines the key principles of fair proceedings outside the courts. Brodsky explains how contemporary debates continue the long, sexist history of “rape exceptionalism,” in which sexual allegations are treated as uniquely suspect. And she calls on readers to resist the anti-feminist backlash that hijacks the rhetoric of due process to protect male impunity. Vivid and eye-opening, at once intellectually rigorous and profoundly empathetic, Sexual Justice clears up common misunderstandings about sexual harassment, traces the forgotten histories that underlie our current predicament, and illuminates the way to a more just world.


The Age of Entitlement

The Age of Entitlement

Author: Christopher Caldwell

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Published: 2021-01-05

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1501106910

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A major American intellectual and “one of the right’s most gifted and astute journalists” (The New York Times Book Review) makes the historical case that the reforms of the 1960s, reforms intended to make the nation more just and humane, left many Americans feeling alienated, despised, misled—and ready to put an adventurer in the White House. Christopher Caldwell has spent years studying the liberal uprising of the 1960s and its unforeseen consequences and his conclusion is this: even the reforms that Americans love best have come with costs that are staggeringly high—in wealth, freedom, and social stability—and that have been spread unevenly among classes and generations. Caldwell reveals the real political turning points of the past half-century, taking you on a roller-coaster ride through Playboy magazine, affirmative action, CB radio, leveraged buyouts, iPhones, Oxycotin, Black Lives Matter, and internet cookies. In doing so, he shows that attempts to redress the injustices of the past have left Americans living under two different ideas of what it means to play by the rules. Essential, timely, hard to put down, The Age of Entitlement “is an eloquent and bracing book, full of insight” (New York magazine) about how the reforms of the past fifty years gave the country two incompatible political systems—and drove it toward conflict.