Regulating sexuality

Rosie Harding's study examines how the law's recent upheaval has shaped the lives, outlooks and day-to-day experiences of lesbians and gay men. Over the past ten years, Britain, Canada and the United States have overhauled nearly every legal rule touching on sexuality, leaving gay and lesbian people in what the author treats as largely unmapped territory. The book was awarded the 2011 SLSA-Hart Socio-Legal Book Prize.

To understand how people respond to these changes, Harding draws on and extends the idea of 'legal consciousness.' Her analysis rests on four sources: written answers from a large online survey about legal recognition of same-sex couples, published autobiographical and biographical accounts of becoming a gay or lesbian parent, in-depth interviews on relationships, parenting, discrimination and equality, and fictional utopias.

Working within the study of social justice movements, the author combines the newer idea of legal pluralism with research on legal consciousness. The result is a detailed, layered account of how sexuality is governed in contemporary society and how law and everyday social life interact.