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Religious freedom and sexual freedom are often assumed to be polar opposites or, at the very least, competing principles. Commentators across the political spectrum in the US speak of a competition of rights in which rights to exercise religious freedom are either above or below those associated with gender and sexual freedom, whether those of bodily autonomy, access to medical care, or participation in public life. The terms of public discourse are then established as a debate over which rights and freedoms should be predominant in an either-or framework. What if, however, religious freedom and sexual freedom were actually entwined values in which the realization of one is necessary to the realization of the other? In exploring this question, “Religious Freedom, Sexual Freedom” shows how reframing understandings of both religious and sexual freedom can open new possibilities for securing freedom of all kinds and for all people.

Biography

Janet R. Jakobsen is the Claire Tow Professor of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies and Co-Director of the Center for Research on Women at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her most recent book, The Sex Obsession: Perversity and Possibility in American Politics, was a 2021 finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Studies. She was the founding editor of the web journal Scholar & Feminist Online and has taught as a visiting professor at Wesleyan University and Harvard University. Before entering the academy, she was a policy analyst and organizer in Washington, D.C.

Assigned Reading

Janet Jakobsen, The Sex Obsession: Perversity and Possibility in American Politics (NYU Press, 2020)