Sex and punishment : four thousand years of judging desire
(Book - Regular Print)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 411-434) and index.

"The 'raging' frenzy of the sex drive, to use Plato's phrase, has always defied control. However, that's not to sat 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. Jump back or forward a century or two or cross a border and the harmless fun of one society becomes the gravest crime in another. Sex and Punishment tells the story of the struggle to regulate the most powerful engine of human behavior. Writer and lawyer Eric Berkowitz has accomplished what no scholar has yet achieved: to use flesh and blood cases--much flesh, even more blood--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 Sex and Punishment includes royal mistresses, gay charioteers, medieval transvestites, misbehaving government officials, lonely goat-lovers, priests, prostitutes, and London rent boys. Each had forbidden sex, and each was judged--though justice as Berkowitz shows, rarely has much to do with it. With the light touch of a natural storyteller, Berkowitz spins these tales and more, going behind closed doors to reveal the essential history of human desire."--Publisher's website.