Jim Kaplan, '81: "Q&A: Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone Talks about 'Sex and the Constitution'"
Q&A: Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone Talks About "Sex and the Constitution"
There are two notable things about University of Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey R. Stone’s Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion and Law from America’s Origins to the Twenty-First Century. First, the book is too modestly titled. It is not only about sex and the Constitution, but most major issues related to sex and the Constitution, including gender discrimination, abortion, same-sex issues, contraception and obscenity.
Second, it is an insightful history of the “social issues” that dominate 21st century American culture, politics and identity -- and a sophisticated and complex analysis of the Supreme Court’s treatment of them. The book’s subtitle -- “Sex, Religion, and Law” -- is significant, because behind so much legal and cultural conflict lies a battle over religion and its use of the state to enforce its moral codes. In a particularly trenchant passage, Stone sets out the basic conflict:
Battles over obscenity, contraception, abortion, sodomy, and same-sex marriage sharply divided Americans along religious lines. Those holding certain religious beliefs about the sinfulness of such behavior, ranging from Lyman Beecher . . . to Jerry Falwell, vigorously insisted that such conduct must be forbidden as “immoral,” whereas those holding different . . . beliefs, ranging from Samuel Roth to Estelle Griswold . . . insisted with equal vigor that government cannot constitutionally restrict . . . freedom merely because some -- or even most -- people believe their conduct to be “sinful.”
As the power and pull of organized religion has waxed and waned in America, the success of claims for greater individual freedom and self-expression have followed the same pattern. And although the last 50 years have, by and large, encouraged freedom and discouraged religious authoritarianism, Stone reminds us that the future is promised to neither side.
With its incisive examination of the arguments -- and bedrock values -- of each side in this never-ending American cultural war, Sex and the Constitution goes to the heart of the subject more than any other recent exploration. And it persuasively warns against believing that any easy resolution of the matter is in the offing. The National’s James Kaplan talked with Professor Stone about his important new book.
Read more at The National Book Review