A New Testament scholar challenges the belief that American family values are based on “Judeo-Christian” norms by drawing unexpected comparisons between ancient Christian theories and modern discourses Challenging the long-held assumption that American values—be they Christian or secular—are based on “Judeo-Christian” norms, this provocative study compares ancient Christian discourses on marriage and sexuality with contemporary ones, maintaining that modern family values owe more to Roman Imperial beliefs than to the bible. Engaging with Foucault’s ideas, Wheeler-Reed examines how conservative organizations and the Supreme Court have misunderstood Christian beliefs on marriage and the family. Taking on modern cultural debates on marriage and sexuality, with implications for historians, political thinkers, and jurists, this book undermines the conservative ideology of the family, starting from the position that early Christianity, in its emphasis on celibacy and denunciation of marriage, was in opposition to procreation, the ideological norm in the Greco-Roman world.

How was the law used to control sex in Tudor England? What were the differences between secular and religious practice? This major study, based on a wide range of church and secular court archives, explores sexual regulation in London and provincial England before, during and immediately after the Reformation.

Lyombe Eko carries out an historical and cultural survey of the regulation of visual depictions of explicit human sexual conduct from their earliest appearance on the clay tablets of the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in ancient Mesopotamia, to the tablet computers of Silicon Valley. The Regulation of Sex-Themed Visual Imagery analyzes the contemporary problem of the applicability of the human right of freedom of expression to explicit imagery in the face of societal interests in the regulation of representations of human sexuality. This book will be of interest to scholars, students, and broad audiences interested in comparative studies in pornography regulation, the history of pornography, the law of pornography and obscenity, and visual culture and history alike.

This book provides the first economic analysis of the billion-dollar male sex work market in the United States.

A 2006 study of Roman sexuality and sexual ethics focusing on the crucial and unsettled concept of pudicitia.

Dr. Bernard examines recent research findings on the present nature of the marriage commitment and predicts a less restrictive role for women in future marriages.

This book explores the institution of manumission-the freeing of slaves-in ancient Rome from a gendered perspective. Rome was unique among ancient polities in that it bestowed freed slaves with full citizenship, granting them rights nearly equal to those of freeborn individuals. The sexual identities of a female slave and a female citizen were fundamentally incompatible, as the former was principally defined by her sexual availability and the latter by her sexual integrity. Accordingly, those evaluating the manumission process needed to reconcile a woman's experiences as a slave with the expectations and moral rigor required of the female citizen.

Just what is a proper use of the Bible, especially the New Testament, in Christian debates about acceptance of homosexuals? In addition to bringing clarity and honesty to issues of the relevance of the Bible, this work brings a little more light and a little less heat to the discussion, a little more acceptance of all persons on the "other side," and maybe even an awareness that in Christ there is really no "other side" at all.

Why we are so fascinated with sex and sexuality—from the preeminent philosopher of the 20th century. Michel Foucault offers an iconoclastic exploration of why we feel compelled to continually analyze and discuss sex, and of the social and mental mechanisms of power that cause us to direct the questions of what we are to what our sexuality is.

Explores single men and women in the Roman world, their ways of life and their reasons for remaining unmarried.