Sex, Preference, and Family: Essays on Law and Nature

ISBN-13: 9780195122879 / Angielski / Miękka / 1998 / 366 str.

David M. Estlund; Martha Craven Nussbaum

Opis

The public furor over issues of same sex marriages, gay rights, pornography, and single-parent families has erupted with a passion not seen since the 1960s. This book gathers seventeen eminent philosophers and legal scholars who offer commentary on sexuality (including sexual behavior, sexual orientation, and the role of pornography in shaping sexuality), on the family (including both same-sex and single-parent families), and on the proper role of law in these areas.

The essayists are all fiercely independent thinkers and offer the reader a range of bold and thought-provoking proposals. Susan Moller Okin argues, for instance, that gender ought to be done away with--that differences in biological sex ought to have "no more social relevance than one's eye color or the length of one's toes"--and she urges that we look to same-sex couples as a model for households and families in a gender-free society. And Cass Sunstein suggests that the Supreme Court case Loving vs. Virginia (which overthrew the ban on interracial marriages in Virginia) might be a precedent for overturning laws that bar same-sex marriage: just as Loving overturned miscegenation laws because they were at the service of white supremacy, Sunstein shows, the laws against same-sex marriages and homosexuality are at the service of male supremacy, and might also be overturned. Of vital importance to anyone interested in sexuality, homosexuality, gender, feminism, and the family.

Sex, Preference, and the Family both clarifies the current debate and points the way toward a less divisive future.

Recenzje

The issues the book raises ... have an international resonance and appeal ... In producing such a wide-ranging, detailed and meticulously referenced book the editors are to be congratulated on a number of counts. The general quality of the contributions, the rigour of the scholarship and the sustained attempt to embrace interdisciplinarity are to be welcomed ... the book represents a timely contribution to critical studies of law and the family in the way in which it challenges the normativity both of "family law" and of (hetero)sexuality itself.

O autorze

David M. Estlund is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. Martha C. Nussbaum is Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago Law School.