Former professor of classics at the University of Texas at Austin, Thomas K. Hubbard investigates sexual politics from antiquity to modern times to ask whether the normative sexual politics of our time are grounded in morality or ideology. We shall deal with two questions: What arguments did the Greeks have for institutional pederasty? And why have the same arguments not been sufficient in modern times?
Through these, Hubbard shall argue that the current US laws that grant equal legal protection to both male and female minors are not based on any scientific research but an unlikely and historically contingent combination of two ideologies: Christian conservatism, which lobbied to police young female sexuality, and Civil Rights progressivism, which campaigned for gender neutral protections.
Hubbard challenges many assumptions we hold for granted: the legal condition of the minor, the acceptability of underage sex among minors, and, most of all, the assumption of historical-moral progress, that we can truly be ‘better’ than our cultural ancestors.
Fact or Value 