The Boundaries of Desire

Starred review from June 29, 2015
Berkowitz, a lawyer with experience in intellectual property, First Amendment, and business litigation, presents an immersive, sometimes shocking history of changing sexual mores, and the laws pertaining to them, in the U.S. He covers topics including homosexuality, pedophilia, interracial couples, and sex trafficking, maintaining a pragmatic, non-judgmental tone. The result is an eye-opening history of sexual legislation. Readers will learn of historical givens that strike us as barbaric now (such as the onetime acceptance of marital rape, not fully outlawed in the U.S. until 1993) and of controversial ongoing practices (such as the lifelong registration of minors in sex-offender registries). Berkowitz makes legal history readable, not relying on the subject matter being salacious (which this book is not) but accessibly conveying sophisticated topics and complex events with the assurance of an expert. Moreover, he ties sexual legislation to disparate historical topics, including the eugenics movement, welfare policy, and even the outbreak of WWI. Readers will be sad to arrive at the end of this skillful piece of popular history. Agent: Andrew Stuart, Stuart Agency.

Starred review from June 15, 2015
This follow-up to lawyer Berkowitz's Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire (2012) brings Western society's continued attempt at regulating sexual mores to the present. Sex, as the author pertinently grasps in this comprehensive survey that moves forward from around the turn of the 19th century, "burns at the intersection of existence, identity and power," and the way we regard it tells a great deal about our society. Berkowitz covers the enormous changes that have swept sex law in the categories of family and marriage; homosexuality; minors; definitions of obscenity; rape and sexual harassment; and interracial sexual relations and marriage. In each chapter, the author reveals the way that power has been gradually relinquished and fear vanquished. He explores the intractable (until a groundbreaking 1984 decision in New York) legal doctrine of what Berkowitz calls the "Rape-Your-Wife Privilege," which entitled a husband to force himself on what was legally his property; the increasing availability of birth control, which has allowed women agency over their bodies, especially significant to the health of working and poor women; the breaking of long-held stereotypes about black females being the "root cause of black poverty"; the defeat of what now appears to us astounding prejudice against "feebleminded" women who got pregnant and homosexuals as criminal and deserving of sterilization and incarceration; and how the hysterical terror of the sex offender prompted draconian residence-restriction laws. Sagely, Berkowitz throws some much-needed light on the still-shadowy definition of obscenity (for example, in public performance), pornography ("sexting" by minors, Clarence Thomas' record of porn-video rentals), and, especially, "the limits of consent" (what constitutes rape in the college setting and who should deal with it). The author cogently exposes what he believes is "panic mentality" in many cases of rape and child molestation. As laws and mores continue to change at a rapid pace, this engaging study offers helpful historical and legal explanations.

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August 1, 2015
In this erudite volume, lawyer and journalist Berkowitz examines in meticulous and fascinating detail a dizzying number of issues related to sexuality and the law: women's rights, gay rights, birth control, the eugenics movement, the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, the legalization of abortion, obscenity and the arts, rape and sexual harassment, and prostitution and sex trafficking. Berkowitz is especially interested in addressing sexuality in terms of the power of the strong over the bodies of the weak; hence, his investigations into Jews in Hitler's Germany killed for having German lovers, African Americans lynched for having relationships with whites, homosexuals forced to undergo lobotomies in mental hospitals as a cure, and sexting teenagers imprisoned as child pornographers. As Berkowitz points out, the law often lags behind social mores and behaviors. It adjusts too slowly to changing social norms and clings too tightly to noxious rules, he writes, citing antimiscegenation laws and Rape-Your-Wife Privilege as two of the most egregious examples. A bracing look at the often-strange relationship between sexuality and the legal system over six tumultuous decades.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)