Since the nation’s founding, individuals, religious groups and radical communities have challenged conventional morality. They have contested the dominant form of monogamous, heterosexual sexuality ...

For much of the 19 th century, “free love” advocates and other sexual radicals battled with what was known as the “social purity” movement over sex and the nature of the family. Between 1852 to 1890, ...

A concept that originated in the mid-nineteenth century, free love meant an absence of legal ties rather than promiscuity, as frequently misunderstood and more frequently charged in the anti-socialist ...