Perversion by Penumbras
Wolfenden, Griswold, and the Transatlantic Trajectory of Sexual Privacy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5737074 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Minto (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 123 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1093-1121 |
| Publication date | 2018-09-18 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The American Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-8762 • E-ISSN: 1937-5239 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ahr/rhy027 |
| OpenAlex | W2808076635 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 1 |
This article provides a queer, transnational account of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1965 articulation, in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), of a constitutional right to privacy. The right in question trumped a Connecticut statute prohibiting contraceptive use even by married couples. But historians emphasizing its emergence from tort privacy and criminal procedure law have neglected an alternative source of its articulation beyond obvious jurisdictional and sexual borders: Britain’s 1957 Wolfenden Report on homosexual offenses and prostitution. The government-commissioned report famously recommended the decriminalization of gay sex on the basis of “a realm of private morality and immorality which is . . . not the law’s business.” In doing so, it not only captured the attention of U.S. homophiles and advocates, who had particular interests in overturning state sodomy laws, but also inspired transatlantic reportage and legal debate that helped to make a sexual privacy right conceptually legible and politically realizable. Elaborating the connection between Wolfenden and Griswold, this article probes the resonance between the Supreme Court’s attention to “penumbras” and the insights of queer history
Decriminalization · Homosexuality · Human rights · Human sexuality · Immorality · Law reform · Morality · Political science · Queer · Right to privacy · Sociology · Sodomy · Supreme court · The Right to Privacy · American History and Culture · European history and politics · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · Law
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.71 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2025 (7) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |