Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.2 | The History Cooperative

Women, Gays, and the Constitution: The Grounds for Feminism and Gay Rights in Culture and Law. By David A. J. Richards. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. xiv, 531 pp. Cloth, $65.00, isbn 0-226-71206-0. Paper, $22.00, isbn 0-226-71207-9.)

Before writing this book, the law scholar David A. J. Richards wondered whether antebellum reform movements had "interpretive relevance" for contemporary debates about "gender and sexual preference." He soon fastened upon "abolitionist feminism" as especially fertile ground. In his view, antebellum feminists "united common principles condemning slavery and racism and the subjection of women and sexism . . . [on] the platform of human rights" in order to eradicate "moral slavery." Having taken up a "theory and practice of rights-based feminism building on abolitionist feminism," reformers then pumped their reading of first principles into the Reconstruction amendments. Ominously, there emerged "suffrage feminism," with its racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and classism. But, says Richards, the anti-"moral slavery" vanguard resurged after World War II, permitting nationalization of the Bill of Rights, universal guarantees of equal protection of law, and "second wave" feminism's condemnation of injustice. Sections describing "abolitionist feminism" and "suffrage feminism" support an analysis of "Second Wave Feminism as Abolitionist Feminism," which in turn lays foundations for a discussion of gay rights, seen here as an extension of developments since the 1840s. . . .

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