How Sex Became a Civil Liberty
Sexual revolutions have transformed American culture, society, and politics-not to
mention individual lives-throughout the twentieth century. Sex radicals challenged
Victorian restraint and championed sexual liberation. In the process, they confronted a
tightly knit web of legal restrictions on sexual expression and conduct designed to keep
sex out of the public realm and to allow public officials to police sex in private spaces.
The American Civil Liberties Union has stood at the center of these battles, using the
Constitution to create an expansive body of sexual rights that helped lay the old order to
rest.
How Sex Became a Civil Liberty is the first book to show how ACLU
leaders and attorneys forged legal principles that advanced the sexual revolution. It
explains how, why, and to what effect ACLU activists developed and revised their own
policies, adopted sexual expression and practice as civil liberties, persuaded courts to
do the same, and joined with commercial media and others to promote these understandings
of sexuality to a broader public. Through its influence over public discourse as well as
law, the ACLU helped to establish a liberal, rights-based sexual ethos in the United
States. It played a prominent role in nearly every major court decision related to
sexuality and also reached beyond the courtroom to promote its agenda through grassroots
activism, political action, advertising campaigns, and public education. Thanks to its
work, abortion and birth control are legal, coerced sterilization is rare, sexually
explicit material is readily available, and gay rights are becoming a reality. Using rich
archival sources and interviews with major players, How Sex Became a Civil Liberty
tells the story of the men and women who built the legal foundation for the sexual
revolution. It explores how private lives shaped approaches to public policy and
illuminates the importance of debates among activists-as well as between activists and
their opponents-in shaping what we now consider to be our sexual rights.
A story of tragedy as well as of triumph, How Sex Became a Civil Liberty
shows how the ACLU helped to create our polarized sexual culture by collapsing old
distinctions between public and private and privileging access to sexual expression over
protection from it. Realizing how the result-a culture saturated with sex and a citizenry
armed with sexual rights-liberates and also limits our sexual choices could help to
transform fights over rights into productive conversations about how to shape the public
world we share. "Wheeler brings fresh analytical perspective and an impressive
research base to the book, making How Sex Became a Civil Liberty
essential reading not just for historians of sexuality or law but also for those
interested in broader questions of equality, democracy, and the evolving conceptualization
of rights in modern America."--Whitney Strub, Journal of American History"In an
era where decades-old cultural battles continue to rage in shifting arenas, How
Sex Became a Civil Liberty is an insightful and timely look into the people and
forces that turned sex from an issue outside the political discourse into a fundamental
component of liberty."
INTRODUCTION ;
CH 1 "WHERE ELSE BUT GREENWICH VILLAGE?": TAKING SEXUAL LIBERTIES,
1910S-1920S
CH 2 "QUEER BUSINESS FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION": DEFENDING UNCONVENTIONAL
SPEECH ABOUT SEX, 1920S-1930S
CH 3 "ARE YOU FREE TO READ, SEE, AND HEAR?": CREATING CONSUMER RIGHTS OUT OF
THE FIRST AMENDMENT, 1940S-1950S
CH 4 "TO BE LET ALONE IN THE BEDROOM": EXPANDING SEXUAL RIGHTS THROUGH
PRIVACY, 1940S-1960S
CH 5 "TO PRODUCE OFFSPRING WITHOUT INTERFERENCE BY THE STATE": MAKING
REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM, 1960S-1970S
CH 6 "WHAT'S HAPPENING TO SEXUAL PRIVACY?": EASING ACCESS TO SEXUAL
EXPRESSION, 1960S-1970S
CH 7 "SOLUTIONS MUST BE FOUND WITHIN CIVIL LIBERTARIAN GUIDELINES":
PROTECTING AGAINST RAPE AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT, 1970S-1990S
CONCLUSION
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
352 pages, Hardcover