In a lecture delivered in 2008, University of Chicago professor Geoffrey Stone confessed to the audience that he had been working on a book tentatively  titled  “Sexing  the Constitution,”  a  project  of  “reckless  ambition.” Almost ten years later, the book has hit the stands, renamed Sex  and  the Constitution: Sex,  Religion,  and  Law  from  America’s Origins  to  the  Twenty-First Century, at a time when debates about sex and religion are more heated than ever. Beginning with a survey of law and sexuality in Greek and Roman times, the book ends with an analysis of the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage  decisions  and  their  aftermath. The breadth of the work is staggering.

Stone covers so much territory in this book, including (but  definitely not limited to) Saint Augustine’s role in the evolution of Christianity’s views on sexuality and sin; Anthony Comstock’s role in the widespread passage of repressive laws banning pornography, birth control, and abortion; the limited role Roe v. Wade actually played in fermenting the rise of the pro-life movement; the history of the gay rights movement in the United States; the dramatic increase  in public toleration for same-sex relationships and marriages; changes in communications technology that have undermined efforts to control explicit sexual images; methods of constitutional interpretation—the list goes on and on. Any of these topics could be—and have been—the subject of their own books.  In the final analysis, though, Stone’s primary thesis becomes clear: religious groups and individuals have, at various times throughout Western history,  used the secular law to foist their beliefs upon nonbelievers.

Read more at Michigan Law Review