Geoff Stone has in a five part series blogged about his new book at the Volokh Conspiracy.
This is the introduction by Eugene Volokh followed by parts
One,
Two,
Three,
Four and
Five. Below is an excerpt from Eugene's introduction that reproduces the publisher's summary:
University of Chicago Professor Geoffrey Stone — one of the nation’s
leading liberal constitutional scholars — is guest-blogging this week
about his new book, “Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America’s Origins to the Twenty-First Century.” Here’s an excerpt from the publisher’s summary:
Beginning
his volume in the ancient and medieval worlds, Geoffrey R. Stone
demonstrates how the Founding Fathers, deeply influenced by their
philosophical forebears, saw traditional Christianity as an impediment
to the pursuit of happiness and to the quest for human progress. Acutely
aware of the need to separate politics from the divisive forces of
religion, the Founding Fathers crafted a constitution that expressed the
fundamental values of the Enlightenment.
Although the Second
Great Awakening later came to define America through the lens of
evangelical Christianity, nineteenth-century Americans continued to view
sex as a matter of private concern, so much so that sexual expression
and information about contraception circulated freely, abortions before
“quickening” remained legal, and prosecutions for sodomy were almost
nonexistent.
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
reversed such tolerance, however, as charismatic spiritual leaders and
barnstorming politicians rejected the values of our nation’s founders.
Spurred on by Anthony Comstock, America’s most feared enforcer of
morality, new laws were enacted banning pornography, contraception, and
abortion, with Comstock proposing that the word “unclean” be branded on
the foreheads of homosexuals. Women increasingly lost control of their
bodies, and birth control advocates, like Margaret Sanger, were
imprisoned for advocating their beliefs. In this new world, abortions
were for the first time relegated to dank and dangerous back rooms.
There
are a lot of interesting things to learn from Professor Stone. Though,
he does engage in a great deal of "law office" history. He's a lawyer
after all.
1 comment:
The commentariat at Volokh seems singularly unimpressed by Prof Stone's bullshit one way or the other.
As for those who demur, they begin with his unsubstantiated claim that Christians saw sex as inherently sinful. If he knew anything about the times, he would know that within the confines of marriage, the Protestants be they Puritan or Anabaptist, were quite enthusiastic about sex.
Post-Founding, another interesting demurral--on an area in which I'm admittedly completely ignorant--is that his archvillian Anthony Comstock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_laws
had the support of the new women's vote and that like Prohibition, legal sexual "prudery" had their support, and Comstock Laws were their fruit, not that of some patriarchal Christian establishment.
The argument was and is that prostitution in those days--and in later years the Sexual Revolution--undermined the family structure in that sex and children were decoupled.
I find this line of argument far more interesting than Prof. Stone's predictable leftist demonization of male Christians. The greatest threat to the family, a mother and her children, are booze and other women, and once achieved, women's suffrage got to work.
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