Sex In and Out of Intimacy

Laura Rosenbury is a productive and original scholar.  That said, I disagree with almost everything she has been writing recently (see, e.g., here and here), and her new article appears to be no exception, at least judging from my quick glance at the introduction. Here's an excerpt:

This Article challenges the underlying assumption in Lawrence that sex is valuable only when potentially in service to emotional intimacy and proposes a new theory for extending legal protection to a wider range of consensual sexual activities. The current regulation of sex devalues both sexual relationships that lack an intimate component and intimate relationships that ack a sexual component. We argue that the state should independently protect both intimate relationships and sexual interactions because sex can constitute a vital part of individual identity and self-expression even when not channeled into intimacy. Other legal scholars have argued that intimate sexual relationships should be protected outside of marriage, or that sex and marriage should be separated from state support for families. Our project is unique in that we extend the deconstructive project to intimacy in general, arguing that sex should be decoupled in the legal sphere from both domestic relationships and other traditional forms of emotional intimacy. We thus challenge the dominant, almost sacred, understanding that the most important relationships between adults should always be both sexual and emotionally intimate.