Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance

by Janet Jakobsen, Ann Pellegrini

Overview

In this powerful and timely book, Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini make a solid case for loving the sinner and the sin. Rejecting both religious conservatives' arguments for sexual regulation and liberal views that advocate tolerance, the authors argue for and realistically envision true sexual and religious freedom in this country. With a new preface addressing recent events, Love the Sin provides activists and others with a strong tool to use in their fight for freedom.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807041338
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	04/15/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.45(d)

About the Author

Janet R. Jakobsen is director of the Center for Research on Women at Barnard College. She is the author of Working Alliances and the Politics of Difference: Diversity and Feminist Ethics.

Ann Pellegrini is associate professor of religious studies and performance studies at New York University. She is the author of Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race.

Table of Contents

	Preface: The More Things Change: Sexual Freedom after Lawrence v. Texas	ix
	Acknowledgments	xvii
	Introduction: Why Religion, Why Sex?	1
1	Getting Religion	19
2	What's Wrong with Tolerance?	45
3	Not Born That Way	75
4	The Free Exercise of Sex	103
5	Valuing Sex	127
	Conclusion: Open Endings, Dreaming America	149
	Notes	153
	Index	169

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“A brilliant book, one that can move public conversations about sexual, racial, and religious difference beyond present assumptions and impasses. Love the Sin suggests that religion can become the ground for sexual freedom rather than the justification for sexual repression.”
-Margaret R. Miles,author of Seeing and Believing: Religion and Values in the Movies

“Jakobsen and Pellegrini do a nice job of showing how the love-the-sinner/hate-the- sin tradition falls dramatically short of the higher aspiration to tolerance.”
-Stephen Pomper,Washington Monthly

“As ambitious, feisty, and exciting as any new passion, Love the Sin takes its readers on a compelling ride across the volatile landscape of religion and sex in American public life. The authors not only provoke and stimulate, guide and elucidate, but they redefine freedom and democracy as values for our sex lives as well as our sexual politics.”
-Lisa Duggan,coauthor of Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture

“Gives us vital language to escape both the trap of toleration and the seduction of assimilation. Not afraid to challenge the certainties of the secular left on religion, nor willing to settle for a narrow version of gay and lesbian rights, Love the Sin presents a new vision of American sexual and religious freedom.”
-Laura Levitt,Director of Jewish Studies, Temple University

“Jakobsen and Pellegrini argue convincingly that movements for ethnic, racial, gender, and sexual justice would be well served by using the paradigm of religious freedom instead of biological determinism to make the case for social change. Love the Sin is required reading for all the sinners to whom the title euphemistically refers, and for everyone who dreams of a more just society.”
-Rabbi Rebecca Alpert,author of Like Bread on the Seder Plate

Editorial Reviews

[Love the Sin's] arguments are advanced with wit and flair. The book pushes us to consider the possibility that our own fundamental assumptions about freedom, morality, Christianity and sexuality might be just plain mistaken. —David Harrington Watt, Christian Century

"[A] tightly packed analysis of the fallacy of sexual tolerance in American society . . . Like any trumpet call to pull down the walls, this book serves its purpose by giving the GLBT community a new focus and even a renewed idealism." —Gayle R. Baldwin, Gay & Lesbian Review

"Love the Sin presents an alternative vision for thinking about politics and religion. It is a unique work, in that it is a critique of the paradigm that is so inbred in us, and a challenge to create a new paradigm that holds nothing but possibilities for a truly inclusive America." —Mary Louise R. Cervone, Conscience Magazine

From the Publisher

The authors of this short but succinct study explore the connection between the traditions of Christianity and the political and social regulation of sexuality in America. They conclude that legal restriction on the practices of gays and lesbians is religious domination by another name. Jakobsen (director, Ctr. for Research on Women, Barnard Coll.) and Pellegrini (drama, Univ. of California, Irvine) contend that gays will never achieve the full rights of citizenship as long as they couch their arguments in terms of tolerance for their lifestyles. Instead, the authors believe that sexuality should be held as a protected freedom like speech, association, or-for that matter-religion. While their argument is for the most part convincing, some readers might be put off by the obvious ideological agenda of this book. Far from being an obsolete concept, tolerance, particularly in the face of strongly held views on both sides, seems more important today than ever. This book is accessible to the general reader, although some may have difficulty with the writers' use of academic jargon. Recommended for larger public libraries.-Andrew Brodie Smith, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Lib., Washington, DC Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

"Gives us vital language to escape both the trap of toleration and the seduction of assimilation. Not afraid to challenge the certainties of the secular left on religion, nor willing to settle for a narrow version of gay and lesbian rights, Love the Sin presents a new vision of American sexual and religious freedom."

Laura Levitt

"As ambitious, feisty, and exciting as any new passion, Love the Sin takes its readers on a compelling ride across the volatile landscape of religion and sex in American public life. The authors not only provoke and stimulate, guide and elucidate, but they redefine freedom and democracy as values for our sex lives as well as our sexual politics."

Lisa Duggan

"A brilliant book, one that can move public conversations about sexual, racial, and religious difference beyond present assumptions and impasses. Love the Sin suggests that religion can become the ground for sexual freedom rather than the justification for sexual repression."

Margaret R. Miles

"Jakobsen and Pellegrini do a nice job of showing how the love-the-sinner/hate-the- sin tradition falls dramatically short of the higher aspiration to tolerance."

Washington Monthly - Stephen Pomper

"Jakobsen and Pellegrini argue convincingly that movements for ethnic, racial, gender, and sexual justice would be well served by using the paradigm of religious freedom instead of biological determinism to make the case for social change. Love the Sin is required reading for all the sinners to whom the title euphemistically refers, and for everyone who dreams of a more just society."

Rabbi Rebecca Alpert