Sex and the Constitution : Sex, Religion, and Law from America's Origins to the Twenty-First Century

Renowned constitutional scholar Geoffrey R. Stonetraces the evolution of legal and moral codes that haveattempted to legislate sexual behavior from the ancientworld to America's earliest days to today's fractious political climate.Stone crafts a remarkable, even thrilling narrative in whichhe shows how agitators, moralists, legislators, and especially thejustices of the Supreme Court have historically navigated issuesas explosive and divisive as abortion, homosexuality, pornography,and contraception. Overturning a raft of contemporaryshibboleths, Stone reveals that at the time the Constitutionwas adopted there were no laws against obscenity and no lawsagainst abortion before the midpoint of pregnancy. A pageantof historical characters—including Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson,Anthony Comstock, Margaret Sanger, J. Edgar Hoover, PhyllisSchlafly, and Justice Anthony Kennedy—enlivens this landmarkwork, which dramatically reveals how our laws about sex,religion, and morality reflect the paradoxes and cultural schismsthat have cleaved our nation from its founding.