Summary of Understanding Human Sexuality - Hyde & Delamate - 13th edition
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Many sexual behaviours, such as adultery or sex with someone younger than eighteen are crimes in the United States. There are several laws that tell people about their sexual behaviour.
Laws about sex are ancient and has its roots in the Hebrew Bible. These rules were used to regulate the religious morals. Even though sex has become a much more private subject, most societies have laws for sexual behaviour. These rules should free people from sexual assault and coercion and that children should not be sexually exploited. Fornication is illegal because this often results in extramarital births. It is compelling that the Judeo-Christian religion still determines some sexual laws since constitution forbids imposing others with religious beliefs. However, these sexual laws resemble rather moral than religious belief. The Victorian compromise refers to the conflict in attitudes about sexuality and results in the law not criminalizing the behaviour per se, but the conduct that is visible to the outside world. The study of sex and the law reflects inequality, sexuality, sexual identities and individuality of a society.
The categorization of sexual laws is difficult because no-one knows how many there are. Civil law, in addition to criminal law might penalize certain sexual behaviours with regards to government employees and immigration regulations. Also, the laws (on sex) are constantly changing, therefore the authors attempt to give a broad overview of the different kinds of sex laws.
The privacy of sexuality is intruded by the law and sex laws are enforced with great inconsistency. The number of severe sexual crimes and the fluctuation in enforcement and punishment reflects on the ambivalence of society against the subject. This calls for a reform in the sex-law system. However, the consequences of sex offences are enormous, someone can lose friendships, family and reputation. It is debatable if such consequences should apply for such private acts. The public good is more often violated by the enforcement of sex laws, rather than the prevention of the sexual crime.
The laws on sex are very difficult to change because the topic of sex is a controversial. The precise directions of changes in sex-laws are impossible to predict. There are some important principles that brought changes in sex-laws before.
Abortion is one of the most difficult and controversial topics of law enforcement. The pro-life movement is well financed, organized and has a lot of lobbying influence. The pro-choice movement is also organized and is starting to be effective. The pro-life movement used five strategies to reduce and eliminate abortions:
The constitution promises equal protection to people of all races, some still experience disadvantages. For example, there is not much known about the abortion rates and reproduction needs of coloured women in the US. The information about abortion and birth control for this group of coloured women should be sensitive to their cultural heritage and available to them. Even though their abortion rates tend to be higher, they do not receive this proper information and data about abortion practices is not available. Abortion is just one example of disadvantages for ethnic groups under the present sex-law system.
There has been a trend of more permissive laws on sexuality. This was caused by the civil rights movement, feminism and the sexual revolution. The new right has replaced most conservativeness with less restrictive laws. The government has two important priorities considering AIDS and the law:
People can lose their job, health insurance, custody rights over their children face all kinds of discrimination after being diagnosed with AIDS. These people seek protection from federal laws. One of these laws is the Vocational Rehabilitation Acts that prohibits discrimination against disabled people in jobs. Some scholars even argue that the medical records of HIV positives should be private to protect people with AIDS.
Embryo fertilization -and transfer, IVF and surrogate motherhood technologies raise legal questions for the government. There are some laws that try to regulate these practices. One is the prohibition of child trafficking or baby buying. In the US, twenty-seven of the states have laws to manage IVF pregnancy. However, there is no comprehensible overview of the biotechnologies of enabling infertile mothers to have children, therefore the creation of laws is extremely complex. The most important question is whether it is a human right to be able to reproduce. Other issues are whether the embryo is a person or a property or what are parental rights when a child is born from a donor?
Perhaps the most complex issue is surrogacy, it might lead to the exploitation of poor women that lease their uterus for conception. The government can either regulate the surrogacy issue by providing binding contracts or fine, but the second option is to stay out of it and leave it to the people involved. Yet, it is probably better to maintain legislation on this issue, because most surrogacy cases already go to court and the government is almost always involved.
Finally, there is the issue of confidentiality. What will those standards be and who needs to be responsible for a child that is conceived by artificial techniques? Is reproduction a private, or a public issue? A group of medical -and social scientists argue that there should be a minimum number of regulations and laws about artificial reproduction. These are the following:
The scientists reached consensus on these issues, but there remained discussion on the following topics:
The considerations above should be applied by lawmakers to define their minimum threshold of rules for artificial procreation. Goodwin (2010) proposed another approach: that people harmed by reproductive technologies (premature birth, disabilities or low birth weight) should be able to sue the physician or fertility clinic. It might promote the reduction of harmful incidents. Nonetheless the responsibility for seeking redress is then placed in the hands of the individual.
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Summary with all chapters of the 13th edition of Understanding Human Sexuality by Hyde & Delamate
Summary with the mandatory readings for the course Sexology (a free elective for Psychology students at the UvA).
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