February 7, 2003

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

By NINA C. AYOUB

When American laws regulate the sexual lives of citizens, it is "religion by other means," say Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini -- a massive dent in an already weakened wall between church and state.

The U.S. Supreme Court, they write, draws as easily and as often on theology as on case law and precedent in its rulings on sexual matters, especially homosexuality. To explore such legal appeals to religion, coded and overt, they begin Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the