Janet R. Jakobsen

Sex, secularism and religious influence in US politics.

Abstract Through an analysis of alliances between secular and religious actors in US politics and a specific case study on anti-trafficking policy, we show that the intertwining of religion and politics in the US comes from two sources: 1) the secular political and cultural institutions of American public life that have developed historically out of Protestantism, and which predominantly operate by presuming Protestant norms and values; and 2) the direct influence on US politics of religious groups and organisations, particularly in the past quarter-century of lobby groups and political action committees identified with conservative evangelical Christianity. The sources of policies that promote gender and sexual inequality in the US are both secular and religious and we conclude that it is inaccurate to assume that religious influence in politics is necessarily conservative or that more secular politics will necessarily be more progressive than the religious varieties.

The economics of fear, the politics of hope, and the perversity of happiness

This article shows how, even in the context of economic crisis, sex is the embodiment of morality in US public discourse. Because of the ways that secular freedom holds together political economy and a politics of sexuality, both religious affect and secular psychoanalysis have become organized around a correlation between morality and sexual practice. Through a brief genealogy of conscience the essay offers perverse happiness as a point of ethical affect that is not trapped in this modern morality play of sexuality.

gender, sex and religious freedom in the context of secular law

In this round table, leading scholars discuss questions about the relationship between religion and secularism and gender and sexuality, including why and how do discussions about religious freedom and secularism tend to coalesce around questions of gender and sexuality, and how can we conceptualise the relation between sex, gender, religion and secularism differently? What is the relationship between the legal and paralegal regulation of gender and sexuality and the regulation of religion?