Sexual revolutions have transformed American culture, society, and politics-not to mention individual lives-throughout the twentieth century. Sex radicals challenged Victorian restraint and championed sexual liberation. In the process, they confronted a tightly knit web of legal restrictions on sexual expression and conduct designed to keep sex out of the public realm and to allow public officials to police sex in private spaces. The American Civil Liberties Union has stood at the center of these battles, using the Constitution to create an expansive body of sexual rights that helped lay the old order to rest. How Sex Became a Civil Liberty is the first book to show how ACLU leaders and attorneys forged legal principles that advanced the sexual revolution. It explains how, why, and to what effect ACLU activists developed and revised their own policies, adopted sexual expression and practice as civil liberties, persuaded courts to do the same, and joined with commercial media and others to promote these understandings of sexuality to a broader public. Through its influence over public discourse as well as law, the ACLU helped to establish a liberal, rights-based sexual ethos in the United States. It played a prominent role in nearly every major court decision related to sexuality and also reached beyond the courtroom to promote its agenda through grassroots activism, political action, advertising campaigns, and public education. Thanks to its work, abortion and birth control are legal, coerced sterilization is rare, sexually explicit material is readily available, and gay rights are becoming a reality. Using rich archival sources and interviews with major players, How Sex Became a Civil Liberty tells the story of the men and women who built the legal foundation for the sexual revolution. It explores how private lives shaped approaches to public policy and illuminates the importance of debates among activists-as well as between activists and their opponents-in shaping what we now consider to be our sexual rights. A story of tragedy as well as of triumph, How Sex Became a Civil Liberty shows how the ACLU helped to create our polarized sexual culture by collapsing old distinctions between public and private and privileging access to sexual expression over protection from it. Realizing how the result-a culture saturated with sex and a citizenry armed with sexual rights-liberates and also limits our sexual choices could help to transform fights over rights into productive conversations about how to shape the public world we share.

In the tumultuous early decades of the twentieth century, women reformers provoked tremendous political and cultural change. Temperance activists succeeded in enacting Prohibition and then saw it repealed. Welfare reformers built and then dismantled the Children's Bureau. Suffragists cheered their momentous victory and then quarreled over its meaning. This period also saw the emergence of an increasingly sexualized popular culture comprised of burlesque shows, risque vaudeville acts, and indecent moving pictures. Politically active middle- and upper-class women began mobilizing against these lewd public amusements, challenging the male-led organizations that had for several decades defined and regulated obscenity. By the 1930s, women leaders of the anti-obscenity movement enjoyed the support of millions of American women and were courted by presidents, congressmen, and Hollywood moguls. Yet today their influence has been all but forgotten.

In Against Obscenity, Leigh Ann Wheeler restores female anti-obscenity activists to their rightful place in twentieth-century women's history, uncovering a fascinating and largely untold aspect of the Progressive Era. At the center of Wheeler's study stands Catheryne Cooke Gilman, an indomitable woman who led the anti-obscenity movement in her native Minneapolis, as well as national grassroots organizations. Through the activities of Gilman and her fellow reformers, Wheeler explains how the rise and fall of women's anti-obscenity leadership shaped American attitudes toward and regulation of sexually explicit material even as it charted a new era in women's politics. She also addresses the passionate disagreements between and among various reformorganizations over these issues (and the interesting reasons for the divisions) -- whether or not to ban a touring stage show, for example, or close a local burlesque theater, disseminate explicit sex education pamphlets, or create a federal agency to regulate Hollywood films.

Today's efforts to protect children from sexual imagery on television and the Internet echo the concerns of this earlier generation of reformers, as do feminist battles over pornography. By recovering the voices of earlier activists -- their concerns and conflicts, victories and failures -- Against Obscenity offers a fresh perspective on contemporary discussions concerning freedom of expression and the moral supervision of American entertainment.

In the tumultuous early decades of the twentieth century, women reformers provoked tremendous political and cultural change. Temperance activists succeeded in enacting Prohibition and then saw it repealed. Welfare reformers built and then dismantled the Children's Bureau. Suffragists cheered their momentous victory and then quarreled over its meaning. This period also saw the emergence of an increasingly sexualized popular culture comprised of burlesque shows, risque vaudeville acts, and indecent moving pictures. Politically active middle- and upper-class women began mobilizing against these lewd public amusements, challenging the male-led organizations that had for several decades defined and regulated obscenity. By the 1930s, women leaders of the anti-obscenity movement enjoyed the support of millions of American women and were courted by presidents, congressmen, and Hollywood moguls. Yet today their influence has been all but forgotten.

In Against Obscenity, Leigh Ann Wheeler restores female anti-obscenity activists to their rightful place in twentieth-century women's history, uncovering a fascinating and largely untold aspect of the Progressive Era. At the center of Wheeler's study stands Catheryne Cooke Gilman, an indomitable woman who led the anti-obscenity movement in her native Minneapolis, as well as national grassroots organizations. Through the activities of Gilman and her fellow reformers, Wheeler explains how the rise and fall of women's anti-obscenity leadership shaped American attitudes toward and regulation of sexually explicit material even as it charted a new era in women's politics. She also addresses the passionate disagreements between and among various reformorganizations over these issues (and the interesting reasons for the divisions) -- whether or not to ban a touring stage show, for example, or close a local burlesque theater, disseminate explicit sex education pamphlets, or create a federal agency to regulate Hollywood films.

Today's efforts to protect children from sexual imagery on television and the Internet echo the concerns of this earlier generation of reformers, as do feminist battles over pornography. By recovering the voices of earlier activists -- their concerns and conflicts, victories and failures -- Against Obscenity offers a fresh perspective on contemporary discussions concerning freedom of expression and the moral supervision of American entertainment.

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.