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A fascinating one-of-a-kind history of the government’s regulation of sexual behavior. From the Pentagon to the wedding chapel, there are few issues more controversial today than gay rights. As William Eskridge persuasively demonstrates in Dishonorable Passions, there is nothing new about this political and legal obsession. The American colonies and the early states prohibited sodomy as the “crime against nature,” but rarely punished such conduct if it took place behind closed doors. By the twentieth century, America’s emerging regulatory state targeted “degenerates” and (later) “homosexuals.” The witch hunts of the McCarthy era caught very few Communists but ruined the lives of thousands of homosexuals. The nation’s sexual revolution of the 1960s fueled a social movement of people seeking repeal of sodomy laws, but it was not until the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) that private sex between consenting adults was decriminalized. With dramatic stories of both the hunted (Walt Whitman and Margaret Mead) and the hunters (Earl Warren and J. Edgar Hoover), Dishonorable Passions reveals how American sodomy laws affected the lives of both homosexual and heterosexual Americans. Certain to provoke heated debate, Dishonorable Passions is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of sexuality and its regulation in the United States.
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
History, Sodomy, Cases, Sex crimes, Sex and law, Law, Nonfiction, LGBTQ history, Stonewall Book Awards, Law, united states, LGBTQ law & legalPlaces
United StatesShowing 3 featured editions. View all 3 editions?
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1
Dishonorable passions: sodomy laws in America, 1861-2003
2008, Viking
Hardcover
in English
0670018627 9780670018628
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2
Dishonorable Passions
2008, Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
Electronic resource
in English
1436291747 9781436291743
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Libraries near you:
WorldCat
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3
Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003
May 1, 2008, Viking Adult, Viking
Hardcover
in English
0670018627 9780670018628
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Libraries near you:
WorldCat
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- Created April 30, 2008
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