Sex Laws Go Back and Forth, and More

A Very Brief History of Sex Laws
There is a  narrative in which the laws and conventions around sex have moved from more to less permissive  and back again many times over. "The federal Comstock Act of 1873 made it a crime to send contraceptives or instructions to their use through the mail, and numerous 'little' Comstock acts introduced similar restrictions in the states." In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled in Eisenstadt v. Baird that the Constitution didn't permit states to treat married and unmarried couples differently with respect to contraceptive laws. In effect, the ruling defined a constitutional right to use birth control. [1]

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Buck v. Bell that forced sterilization didn't violate the Constitution. A consequence was that countless blacks and Native Americans were forcibly sterilized after being falsely diagnosed as "feeble-minded," a practice that lasted in some places into the 1970s. [2]

The Death Penalty Doesn't Deter and Kills the Innocent
"The Eighth Amendment prohibition against 'cruel and unusual' punishment served as a measure of the elastic morality that facilitates the death penalty." "Data from the Death Penalty Information Center show that, in the past forty years, there have been eleven hundred and eighty executions in the South, compared with four in the Northeast, yet homicide figures in 2015 were nearly seventy per cent higher in Southern states than in Northeastern ones." "Since 1973, a hundred and fifty-eight inmates on death row have been exonerated of the crimes for which they were sent there." [3]

"The condemned men perpetrated a litany of horrors, but the rationales for putting them to death -- a decades-delayed catharsis for the victims' families, a lottery-slim chance that some future violence will be deterred -- are as close to their extinction as Arkansas's supply of midazolam."

President Trump's Real Base
The polling firm designated as  "Five-Thirty Eight" reported in May 2016 that "the median income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000," or roughly 130 percent of the national medium. "Trump's real base, the actual backbone of fascism, isn't poor and working-class and affluent whites." "Trump's most institutionally entrenched middle-class base includes police and Border Patrol unions."

"Location became the first rule of real estate, suburban homeowners nurtured racist attitudes, whites deluding themselves that they weren't excluding black people for reasons beyond their pocketbooks." "To the contrary, the form of economic anxiety propelling the racism of devoted Trump supporters is associated with paying taxes; with jealously guarding their modest savings; with stopping black people from moving nearby and diminishing the value of their property and thus the quality of their kids' schools; and with preserving the patriarchal family structure that facilitates it all." [4]

ADDENDUM:
*The San Antonio Express News has reported that the Texas state House has passed a bill that includes an amendment banning doctors from vaccinating children who are new entries to the foster care system.

Footnotes
[1] Anna North, "The Work of Equality," The Nation, May 22/29, 2017.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Jelani Cobb, "Out of Time," The New Yorker, May 8, 2017.

[4] Jesse A. Myerson, "White, Black & Red," The Nation, May 22/29, 2017.