Description: In this remarkably thorough study, David Richards combines an interpretive history of culture and law, political philosophy, and constitutional analysis to explain the background, development, and growing impact of two of the most important human rights movements of our time: feminism and gay rights. Richards argues that both movements are extensions of rights-based dissent (including Walt Whitman's poetry and prose), rooted in antebellum abolitionist feminism that condemned both American racism and sexism. He goes on to address current controversies such as the exclusion of homosexuals from the military and from the right to marriage and concludes with a powerful defense of the struggle for such constitutional rights.

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