Using a wide range of prosecution and trial records, along with more recent newspaper coverage of court proceedings, this book furnishes a fascinating insight into the relationship between the law, sex, and society in modern Scotland. Case studies of sex-related offences, including abortion, bestiality, brothel-keeping, child sexual assault, and wilful HIV transmission, reveal how far the legal process both reflected and reinforced contemporary moral panics and how far it was shaped by the interplay between law officers and forensic experts, by the prejudices of the local community and civic leaders, and by Scotland's distinctive legal and moral identity. The law in practice is seen to have sustained important norms of sexual behaviour and masculinity along with an enduring double moral standard with respect to female sexuality. This volume thus affords a remarkable new perspective on the sexual behaviours and ideologies of Scottish society across the twentieth century and into the new millennium.

In 1907 the Probation of Offenders Act introduced a system which allowed offenders to be rehabilitated at home under supervision, rather than being sent to prison. This book explores how the probation system was used to regulate the private lives, emotions and behaviours of people in Britain between 1907 and 1962. Access to the private sphere, both physically and psychologically, meant that the probation system was particularly well-suited to offences related to intimate and personal relations. With each chapter focusing on a particular type of offence, including wife assault, attempted suicide, male sexual offences and female prostitution, Settle shows how experiences of the probationers were shaped by the everyday practices of probation, and assesses the extent to which probation was successful in rehabilitating offenders and protecting the public. Also examining the role of probation officers in marriage reconciliation, the book explores how ideas about gender and domesticity were crucial to both the process of rehabilitation and the endeavour to make the home a safe environment in which these domestic ideals could come into fruition. Probation and Policing of the Private Sphere in Britain enriches our understanding of the role of the state in policing, monitoring and promoting the well-being of its citizens, and explores the nuances of probation's dual purpose as a form of social control as well as a social work service designed to help the most vulnerable in society.

In Sins against Nature Zeb Tortorici explores the prosecution of sex acts in colonial New Spain (present-day Mexico, Guatemala, the US Southwest, and the Philippines) to examine the multiple ways bodies and desires come to be textually recorded and archived. Drawing on the records from over three hundred criminal and Inquisition cases between 1530 and 1821, Tortorici shows how the secular and ecclesiastical courts deployed the term contra natura—against nature—to try those accused of sodomy, bestiality, masturbation, erotic religious visions, priestly solicitation of sex during confession, and other forms of "unnatural" sex. Archival traces of the visceral reactions of witnesses, the accused, colonial authorities, notaries, translators, and others in these records demonstrate the primacy of affect and its importance to the Spanish documentation and regulation of these sins against nature. In foregrounding the logic that dictated which crimes were recorded and how they are mediated through the colonial archive, Tortorici recasts Iberian Atlantic history through the prism of the unnatural while showing how archives destabilize the bodies, desires, and social categories on which the history of sexuality is based.

Exposes the mechanisms by which conservative Christianity dominated British culture during 1945-65 and their subsequent collapse.

In Bible, Gender, Sexuality James Brownson argues that Christians should reconsider whether or not the biblical strictures against same-sex relations as defined in the ancient world should apply to contemporary, committed same-sex relationships. Presenting two sides in the debate -- "traditionalist" and "revisionist" -- Brownson carefully analyzes each of the seven main texts that appear to address intimate same-sex relations. In the process, he explores key concepts that inform our understanding of the biblical texts, including patriarchy, complementarity, purity and impurity, honor and shame. Central to his argument is the need to uncover the moral logic behind the biblical text. Written in order to serve and inform the ongoing debate in many denominations over the questions of homosexuality, Brownson's in-depth study will prove a useful resource for Christians who want to form a considered opinion on this important issue.

Sexuality and the Unnatural in Colonial Latin America brings together a broad community of scholars to explore the history of illicit and alternative sexualities in Latin America’s colonial and early national periods. Together the essays examine how "the unnatural” came to inscribe certain sexual acts and desires as criminal and sinful, including acts officially deemed to be “against nature”—sodomy, bestiality, and masturbation—along with others that approximated the unnatural—hermaphroditism, incest, sex with the devil, solicitation in the confessional, erotic religious visions, and the desecration of holy images. In doing so, this anthology makes important and necessary contributions to the historiography of gender and sexuality. Amid the growing politicized interest in broader LGBTQ movements in Latin America, the essays also show how these legal codes endured to make their way into post-independence Latin America.

Using case records of prosecutions at the Scottish High Court of Justiciary between 1918 and 1930, this book takes a quantitative and qualitative approach to understand sexual violence in Scotland at this time. Analysing legal records alongside victim and witness testimonies, Louise Heren analyses who committed sexual violence against whom, where and how and, to an extent, looks to uncover the victims' voice. Assessing how the courts responded, Sex and Violence in 1920s Scotland reveals that, despite pejorative views of working-class female behaviour, the successful conversion of prosecutions to convictions was greater than what is seen in modern sexual assault cases. In a society adjusting to post-conflict stresses, there were fears expressed in middle-class circles that those most affected by the First World War might react with violence. However, the High Court archives suggest otherwise. Cases of incest, rape and sexual assault appears to have been endemic, an opportunistic crime against older victims yet often pre-meditated against the youngest; selfish crimes that suggest toxic masculinity among some working-class men. The book concludes with the ultimate question: why did these men perpetrate sexual violence?