title: The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Politics and Society in Modern America)
author:  Margot Canaday 
description: <b>"Winner of the 2012 Biennial Book Award, Order of the Coif"</b><br /><br /><b>"Winner of the 2011 John Boswell Prize, Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History"</b><br /><br /><b>"Winner of the 2010 Ellis W. Hawley Prize, Organization of American Historians"</b><br /><br /><b>"Winner of the 2010 Lambda Literary Award, LGBT Studies by the Lambda Literary Foundation"</b><br /><br /><b>"Co-Winner of the 2010 Gladys M. Kammerer Award, American Political Science Association"</b><br /><br /><b>"Winner of the 2010 Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize, American Studies Association"</b><br /><br /><b>"Winner of the 2010 Cromwell Book Prize, American Society for Legal History"</b><br /><br />"It is not really news that inhabitants of the United States are governed by what historian Margot Canaday calls, in the title of her excellent book, a 'straight state.' For some time now, scholars of sexuality (following in the footsteps of those who have studied and challenged the race and gender hierarchies embedded in state policies and actions) have professed the analytical goal of what historian Lisa Duggan, writing in 1994, called 'queering the state.' These scholars have argued that the supposed naturalness of the heterosexual couple, and the unnaturalness of alternatives, is presumed and reinforced in the ordinary workings of government. Canaday's substantial contribution is to trace, in gripping and at times horrifying detail, exactly how the United States came to operate in this fashion over the course of much of the twentieth century. <i>The Straight State</i> provides a compelling history of the designation of 'the homosexual as the anticitizen.' . . . <i>The Straight State</i> is a captivating, engagingly written work of social, political, legal and sexual history, and the fruit of an extraordinary attention to archival documents."<b>---Steven Epstein, <i>Nation</i></b><br /><br />"[Canaday] succeeds in . . . contributing brilliantly both to understandings of the relationship between state practices and the construction of identity and to the story of the rise of the modern bureaucratic state as a sexual state. . . . [This] book . . . presents a fascinating reframing of a familiar story and opens substantial new space for related research."<b>---Julie Novkov, <i>Perspectives on Politics</i></b><br /><br />"[<i>The Straight State</i>] is a pathbreaking, riveting historical study. . . . [Canaday's] brilliant book is revelatory."<b>---David A. J. Richards, <i>Law and History Review</i></b>
zlib_text: Political Institutions and 
  Lesbian and Gay Rights in 
  the United States 
  and Canada
  
  Routledge Studies in 
  North American Politics
  1. Political Institutions and 
  Lesbian and Gay Rights in the 
  United States and Canada
  Miriam Smith
  
  Political Institutions and 
  Lesbian and Gay Rights in 
  the United States 
  and Canada
  Miriam Smith
  New York London
  
  First published 2008
  by Routledge
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