Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003

Abstract

"In Dishonorable Passions the distinguished legal scholar William N. Eskridge Jr. examines the remarkable chronicle of sodomy legislation and its legacy today. Although the American colonies and the early states prohibited sodomy as "the crime against nature," they rarely punished such conduct if it was between consenting adults behind closed doors, By 1900, however, with the growth of urban areas, increased immigration, and the newly coined category of "homosexual," the emerging regulatory state began to target elements it considered "degenerates." During the McCarthy era, the slate essentially declared war of "homosexual" sodomites. The anti - homosexual campaign of the 1950s and the sexual revolution of the 1960s fueled a social movement that sought to overturn consensual sodomy laws. In a dramatic and unpredictable story, the campaign against sodomy laws was not successful until a conservative Supreme Court buried them for good in Lawrence v. Texas (2003)." "Featuring vivid portraits of both the hunted (including such figures as Walt Whitman, Margaret Mead, and Bayard Rustin) and the hunters (Anthony Comstock, Earl Warren, and J. Edgar Hoover), dishonorable passions is a landmark account of a seldom investigated but fascinating aspect of our history and a key battlefront in the struggle for personal freedom."--BOOK JACKET.

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