Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance » (None)

Janet R. Jakobsen is director of the Center for Research on Women at Barnard College. She is the author of Working Alliances and the Politics of Difference: Diversity and Feminist Ethics.

Ann Pellegrini is associate professor of religious studies and performance studies at New York University. She is the author of Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race.

If freedom is such an important value in American life, ask Jakobsen (women's studies, Barnard College) and Pellegrini (religious studies and performance studies, New York U.), then why is advocating sexual freedom considered radical, extremist, or even un-American. The main text, published in a 2003 clothbound edition by New York University Press, discusses at length the 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick US Supreme Court ruling; a new preface here adds perspectives from the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling, which reversed it. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Library Journal

The authors of this short but succinct study explore the connection between the traditions of Christianity and the political and social regulation of sexuality in America. They conclude that legal restriction on the practices of gays and lesbians is religious domination by another name. Jakobsen (director, Ctr. for Research on Women, Barnard Coll.) and Pellegrini (drama, Univ. of California, Irvine) contend that gays will never achieve the full rights of citizenship as long as they couch their arguments in terms of tolerance for their lifestyles. Instead, the authors believe that sexuality should be held as a protected freedom like speech, association, or-for that matter-religion. While their argument is for the most part convincing, some readers might be put off by the obvious ideological agenda of this book. Far from being an obsolete concept, tolerance, particularly in the face of strongly held views on both sides, seems more important today than ever. This book is accessible to the general reader, although some may have difficulty with the writers' use of academic jargon. Recommended for larger public libraries.-Andrew Brodie Smith, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Lib., Washington, DC Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.