How Sex Became a Civil Liberty

by Leigh Ann Wheeler

How Sex Became a Civil Liberty is the first book to show how and why we have come to see sexual expression, sexual practice, and sexual privacy as fundamental rights. Using rich archival sources and oral interviews, historian Leigh Ann Wheeler shows how the private lives of women and men in the American Civil Liberties Union shaped their understanding of sexual rights as they built the constitutional foundation for the twentieth-century's sexual revolutions.

Wheeler introduces readers to a number of fascinating figures, including ACLU founders Crystal Eastman and Roger Baldwin; nudists, victims of involuntary sterilization, and others who appealed to the organization for help; as well as attorneys like Dorothy Kenyon, Harriet Pilpel, and Melvin Wulf, who pushed the ACLU to tackle such controversial issues as abortion and homosexuality. It demonstrates how their work with the American Birth Control League, Planned Parenthood Federation, Kinsey Institute, Playboy magazine, and other organizations influenced the ACLU's agenda.

Wheeler explores the ACLU's prominent role in nearly every major court decision related to sexuality while examining how the ACLU also promoted its agenda through grassroots activism, political action, and public education. She shows how the ACLU helped to collapse distinctions between public and private in ways that privileged access to sexual expression over protection from it. Thanks largely to the organization's work, abortion and birth control are legal, coerced sterilization is rare, sexually explicit material is readily available, and gay rights are becoming a reality. But this book does not simply applaud the creation of a sex-saturated culture and the arming of citizens with sexual rights; it shows how hard-won rights for some often impinged upon freedoms held dear by others.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, Sexuality

352 pages, Hardcover

First published October 29, 2012

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really enjoyable chronological narrative of the history of the ACLU & their sexual freedom litigation. The chapters are broken down by broad 10 or 20 year span, with a discussion of the biggest sexual freedom issues of the time, an overview of the cases, & a discussion of the ACLUs involvement in each. There was not always agreement among the hierarchy of the ACLU folks, and the book does a great job discussing that - for example, the ACLU was often a champion of the rights of the accused & freedom of speech - however, that came into conflict in the 70s and 80s with the advent of victims rights, and eventually of "rape shield" laws. The latter would seem to be directly opposed to the ACLUs first amendment absolutism - and yet many in the ACLUs Women's Rights Project favored these laws.

The book does have a few problems - the 20 year periods that each chapter is based on can be a bit forced, and thus leave out major pieces of sexual freedom litigation. For example, the last chapter is subtitled "protecting against rape and sexual harassment, 1970-1990." While it is certainly true that these two decades were very concerned with rape and sexual harassment & the aforementioned rape shield laws, because of the direct focus on this, there is no mention of a major sex/civil rights case, Bowers v. Hardwick, which held that sodomy laws were NOT unconstitutional.

Overall, though, I would recommend it as a nifty survey of the ACLU.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and comprehensive work focusing on the work of the ACLU in using the First Amendment to establish various rights related to sexual behavior, including the ability to publish and reading erotic and homosexual works, privacy rights (i.e., sexual activities in the bedroom), abortion, contraception and protection against rape and sexual harassment.

[Sally Kenney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learned a lot about the ACLU. Book is more about sex than women. Sexism and free speech absolutism trump women's equality. Interesting roots of ACLU in birth control movement. Also informative about gay rights litigation.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very informative look at both the history of the ACLU and American public policy. While originally published in 2013, it still feels timely, particularly post-Dobbs. This is a critical piece in understanding where our sexual liberties come from, why they have been so easily lost, and how to better strengthen them.