A Guide to America's Sex Laws

Sex, although considered by many in our culture the quintessential private activity, is blanketed by a large number and variety of laws. This text presents a concise compendium of the America's sex laws and brings together in one place, and summarizes, the laws regulating personal sexual activity. In doing so, the book reveals gaps, anachronisms, anomalies, inequalities , and irrationalities, and provides an empirical basis for studies of sexual regulation. In some states, for example, sexual relations between consenting adults of the same sex is a crime, in some states the age of consent to marriage is lower for females than for males, and in some states marital rape is not a crime. Such a mixed quilt of state laws means that a sexual practice that is perfectly legitimate in one state is illegal in another.