An urgent call for everyone to find inventive ways to question the ethics of sexuality.

This monumental study of medieval law and sexual conduct explores the origin and develpment of the Christian church's sex law and the systems of belief upon which that law rested. Focusing on the Church's own legal system of canon law, James A. Brundage offers a comprehensive history of legal doctrines–covering the millennium from A.D. 500 to 1500–concerning a wide variety of sexual behavior, including marital sex, adultery, homosexuality, concubinage, prostitution, masturbation, and incest. His survey makes strikingly clear how the system of sexual control in a world we have half-forgotten has shaped the world in which we live today. The regulation of marriage and divorce as we know it today, together with the outlawing of bigamy and polygamy and the imposition of criminal sanctions on such activities as sodomy, fellatio, cunnilingus, and bestiality, are all based in large measure upon ideas and beliefs about sexual morality that became law in Christian Europe in the Middle Ages. "Brundage's book is consistently learned, enormously useful, and frequently entertaining. It is the best we have on the relationships between theological norms, legal principles, and sexual practice."—Peter Iver Kaufman, Church History

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Abortion, the wrongful transmission of sexual diseases, sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace, AIDS victims' rights and responsibilities, surrogate motherhood, paternity, the regulation of contraception, rights of lesbians and gay males, and the rights of the unborn are surveyed. Leading judicial precedents on these subjects are discussed and many citations to case and statutory authority are supplied to assist the reader who would like to engage in further research on any of these subjects.

div When it was published twenty-five years ago, Catharine MacKinnon’s pathbreaking work Sexual Harassment of Working Women had a major impact on the development of sexual harassment law. The U.S. Supreme Court accepted her theory of sexual harassment in 1986. Here MacKinnon collaborates with eminent authorities to appraise what has been accomplished in the field and what still needs to be done. An introductory essay by Reva Siegel considers how sexual harassment came to be regulated as sex discrimination. Contributors discuss how law can best address sexual harassment; the importance and definition of consent and unwelcomeness; issues of same-sex harassment; questions of institutional responsibility for sexual harassment in both employment and education settings; considerations of freedom of speech; effects of sexual harassment doctrine on gender and racial justice; and transnational approaches to the problem. An afterword by MacKinnon assesses the changes wrought by sexual harassment law in the past quarter century. /DIV

Whether the issue is sexual predators, abortion, same-sex marriage, sexual harassment, or internet pornography, stories relating to sexual matters regularly make headlines in the news and provoke strong emotions. But until now, researchers looking for policy information on these issues have been limited to reading books that often express particular points of view, or to searching multi-volume professional legal resources. Encyclopedia of Sexual Behavior and the Law is a single comprehensive volume, written specifically for the non-lawyer, that addresses sexual policy in the United States, as shaped by federal laws, state laws, and court cases. This unique new resource provides balanced, reliable treatment to some of the most important, highly publicized topics in society today. In approximately 150 encyclopedic entries, Encyclopedia of Sexual Behavior and the Law addresses: Broad policy areas, including entertainment industry regulations, laws for teenagers, as both victims and perpetrators, and the legal aspects of marriage Significant laws, including the Child Online Protection Act, Megan′s law, and rape shield laws Medical and health policies and issues, including DNA evidence, stem-cell research, and genetic information The role of government agencies and institutions, including the Food and Drug Administration and the FBI′s Crimes against Children unit Encyclopedia of Sexual Behavior and the Law also covers significant court cases, private organizations and institutions, significant people, and many more relevant subjects. This new volume will serve as a useful guide to this complicated subject for researchers in university, community college, high school, and public libraries.

@$#*%! Our most taboo word and how the law keeps it forbidden. This entertaining read is about the word "fuck", the law, and the taboo. Whether you shout it out in the street or whisper it in the bedroom, deliberately plan a protest, or spontaneously blurt it out, if you say "fuck," someone wants to silence you, either with a dirty look across the room or by making a rule that you cannot say the word. When it's the government trying to cleanse your language, though, you should worry. Words are ideas. If the government controls the words we use, it can control what we think. To protect this liberty, we must first understand why the law's treatment of "fuck" puts that freedom at risk. This book examines the law surrounding the word and reveals both inconsistencies in its treatment and tension with other identifiable legal rights that the law simply doesn't answer. The power of taboo provides the framework to understand these uncertainties. It also explains why attempts to curtail the use of "fuck" through law are doomed to fail. Fundamentally, it persists because it is taboo; not in spite of it.