Eric Berkowitz: Sex and Punishment

Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire. USA 2012, 456 pp., hardbound, € 23.20
Kostenloser Versand innerhalb Europas.
Berkley
From the bedroom to the courtroom - a riveting history of the law of sex. The »raging frenzy« of the sex drive, to use Plato's phrase, has always defied control. However, that's not to say that every civilization has not tried, using its most powerful weapon: the law. At any given point in history, some forms of sex were condoned while others were punished mercilessly. The author used flesh-and-blood cases to evoke the entire sweep of Western sex law, from the savage impalement of an ancient Mesopotamian adulteress to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde in 1895 for »gross indecency«. The cast of the book includes royal mistresses, gay charioteers, medieval transvestites, misbehaving government officials, lonely goat-lovers, priests, prostitutes, and London rent boys.