Where Did Disabled Babies Get Sent to in 19th Century England

We have an image of puritans as cold, severe, hyper-strict and religious people, and while that'due south non entirely imitation, it's besides not entirely true. From the very beginning, early Americans were thinking about sex. The courts were encumbered with hundreds of cases in which people broke the laws regarding sexual morality, such as premarital or extramarital sexual activity or pregnancy out of wedlock. At that place was also a panic around a rise in animality!

We invite you to listen to our podcast, read the transcript or lookout man the YouTube video below.

Puritans Cassell's Illustrated History of England Volume three Public Domain Wikimedia Commons

Like what you lot hear?

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Further Reading on Puritans and Sexuality:

Doron Southward. Ben-Atar and Richard D. Dark-brown, Taming Lust: Crimes Against Nature in the Early Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)

John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (Chicago: Academy of Chicago Printing, 1988).

Richard Godbeer Sexual Revolution in Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).

Merry Wiesner-Hanks, Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practise (London: Routledge, 2000).

Other Episodes of Involvement:

• Selling Sexual activity: 19th Century New York Metropolis Brothels and Prostitution
• Marie Stopes: Married Sexual Pleasure, Birth Command and Eugenics
• Marquis de Sade: Sex activity and Violence in the French Revolution

Transcript of Puritans and Sexual activity:

Puritan Sex: The Surprising History of Puritans and Their Sexual Practices

Written and researched past Sarah Handley-Cousins, PhD Produced and recorded past Sarah Handley-Cousins, PhD and Marissa Rhodes, MLS, PhD Candidate

Sarah: Today we're talking about sex and the Puritans. I know … that probably doesn't actually sound all that sexy. I hope it'south not going to be a boring episode, all about prudes in the missionary position, probably yet wearing their black clothes and buckle shoes! The Puritans were far more sexually adventurous that you might suspect, then much and so that they challenged traditional family unit values and caused religious crises. And possibly acquired merely a leeetle bit of a panic about bestiality. It'll be fun, I promise.

I'm Sarah Handley-Cousins

And I'm Marissa Rhodes

And we're your historians for this episode of DIG

Sarah: We accept an prototype of puritans equally common cold, astringent, hyper-strict and religious people, and while that's non entirely false, information technology's also not entirely truthful. From the very beginning, early Americans were thinking about sexual activity. Even before English people had arrived in the New World, they were envisioning the very country in a sexual way, describing it equally "a fair virgin, longing to be sped and meet her lover in a nuptial bed." In a way, they thought of information technology as a kind of Eden, a unpopulated wilderness that needed people to procreate.

For example, a volume written in the 1600s chosen The Isle of Pines described a fellow named George Pino, who was shipwrecked with several women – a teenage girl, 2 maidservants, and an enslaved adult female. Afterward a while, George and the maidservants start having sex activity, "at offset in private, but after, custom taking away shame, in that location existence none but u.s.a., we did it more openly equally our animalism gave us liberty." Soon, he was also having sex with the teenage girl and the enslaved woman; before long, he and his near 2000 children, grandchildren, and slap-up-grandchildren have populated this island.

Marissa: The idea that the New Earth, and the new Puritan church in Massachusetts, would be a den of sexual deviance was a mutual theme in England as well. A popular poem published in the 1600s suggested that the new Church building was going to make "all things common, to avert strife," and therefore "each man may accept another's wife, and keep a handmaid as well, if demand, to multiply, increase, and breed." Part of this was just glee at the hypocrisy of the Puritans, who were known for beingness hyper-strict about sexuality. (I think there are better reasons for this having to practise with religious rivalries which led to the English Ceremonious War and the Commonwealth years. Puritans IN England were treated the aforementioned way. When someone bankrupt the strict sexual morality laws and news reached the mother-country, they had a field 24-hour interval.) Of course, much of this was exaggerated for a laugh, merely even the leading men of the Massachusetts colony had to hold that sexual mores were being broken. William Bradford, who served as governor of Plymouth, admitted that there was a "breaking out of sundry notorious sins." The courts were burdened with hundreds of cases in which people broke the laws regarding sexual morality, such equally premarital or extramartial sex or pregnancy out of marriage.

Sarah: And some puritans, like Bradford, actually saw this as a good affair. Showtime, the huge numbers of sexual activity cases in the courts testified to the fact, in Bradford's mind, that the church and authorities were doing a great job rounding up people for breaking laws regarding sexual practice! Second, he saw it every bit proof that the Puritans were excellent Christians – so practiced, in fact, that Satan wanted to tarnish them in the optics of the earth by tempting them to bone. Puritan authorities also faced difficulty policing sexuality in Massachusetts because not every single person who lived in the colony was a pious Puritan, especially in outlying rural areas – where people tended to take ad-hoc community regarding sexuality – and in more urban places, especially sea ports – where proximity to visitors and long stretches with crewman-husbands off at sea meant that many women saw neat opportunities in running informal brothels.

Marissa: Ane mode puritans tried to grapple with this was by blaming England for sending them bad migrants – such as 5 "beastly sodomitical boys, who confessed their wickedness not to exist named" who came across the Atlantic in 1629. The boys were shipped correct back to England.

Sarah: But the problem of and then-chosen sexual deviance was homegrown, too. In 1 way, information technology was an outgrowth of immigration patterns. While the offset Puritan settlers in Massachusetts were extremely devout, as generations went on, younger colonists pushed at social boundaries and created their ain cultures. Plus, equally years went on, more and more of the people who moved to Massachusetts from England were not Puritans, which diluted the religiosity of communities and also gave younger people non-religious (or less religious) friends and partners. Members of dissimilar classes had dissimilar approaches to sexuality – servants, for example, were less worried about Puritan norms. Servants often took reward of moments when their householders were gone to hook upward – during church or militia drills, for instance. Of form they likewise sometimes snuck out and did it on the wood pile at night. One reason for this is that servants were expected to filibuster marriage and therefore "legitimate" sexual contact until after their terms of service. This was not always applied.

At the Hr of Midnight, Library of Congress, Washington DC

Marissa: Young people also took part in something called "junketing," which was when a group of young friends – girls and boys – gathered to laugh, dance, tell dirty jokes, and sometimes engage in debauchery. These junkets could frequently run afoul of colonial and customs regime, but even for Puritans, at that place was sort of an agreement that immature people will do this stuff. When ane group of young people got in trouble for carousing in 1676, an older man complained that the authorities were being too harsh, commenting that "a young man could never be made an old homo."

Sarah: That reminds me of petting parties from the 1920s. See, we have these panics nearly loosening sexual morality over and over – and really, information technology'southward not all that new! That's why I curl my eyes whenever curmudgeons start with the "kids these days…" because ..puhhhlease you're not the first generation to complain nearly the corruption of a younger one and you won't be the final.

Junketing was virtually concerning to Puritan government because of the dancing, which was seen equally hypersexual and likewise tempting. Increase Mather, one of the famous (infamous?!) clan of Puritan preachers warned his followers that "the very motion of the torso which is used in dancing has a palpable tendency to that which is evil." He also said in sermons, which were later printed and distributed as a book, that "mixed dancing" between men and women "was utterly unlawful," "a scandalous immorality," "a recreation fitter for pagans and whores and drunkards than for Christians." But of class, people kept right on dancing!

(I can't help but think that Footloose was actually based on Puritan trip the light fantastic toe panics, LOL.)

Marissa: Every bit nosotros mentioned before, some of the anxiety was also almost premarital sexual activity. This wasn't new. It had long been custom in England that engaged couples could take sex before they were married, which meant a lot of children being conceived before marriage. In New England, marriage, and even engagements, took on a more formal tone than they did in other American colonies such as Jamestown. Couples had to publicly announce their decision to marry, and then exist formally married by a licensed private – somewhen, that official became a clergyman (but that wasn't common until the end of the 17 thursday century!). This didn't stop people from being intimate before marriage. In fact, sex could often be a grade of exchange between a human and adult female: a woman would consent to sex activity if the homo would agree to marriage; men who made such promises in the heat of passion could be legally charged for breaking a contract to marry if they went back on their promises! A significant number of the people disciplined for sex crimes were charged with having sex and/or conceiving before marriage, even when they married the person they had had sexual activity with. They often tried to argue that they had been doing nothing incorrect, harkening back to the older, English custom of allowing sex activity with fiancés. In these cases, the courts felt that their role was to bring the defendant to the knowledge of their sin, get them to repent, then publicly shame them in a way that would send a message to the remainder of the community.

Sarah: In that location was as well a disagreement between officials and the people who had the authority to formalize a relationship into a matrimony. Some New Englanders, especially those living on the outskirts, came to agreements among themselves to be married, to be divorced, and to remarry, without ever coming into contact with the state. In that location was a case in 1665 of a adult female who had been in a long-term human relationship and had children with a man who abandoned her. Afterward, she entered into another long-term relationship with another man, lived with him for almost 20 years. At some point, she was accused of living in a "pretended" marriage and brought to trial. The central question was over whether this couple had the ability to simply declare themselves married. Allowing people to declare themselves married seemed similar a slippery slope to sexual carelessness.

Marissa: Much subsequently, in the late xviii thursday century, the question of marriage and sexuality led to a sort of centre footing with the practice known as bundling. Information technology became harder and harder to command the sexual actions of the younger generations, and so premarital sexual practice was less often policed. Equally people moved out into the country, and cities grew,  there was less social pressure – your neighbors couldn't watch you and plough you in, which was a major characteristic of Puritan culture during the 17 thursday century. Instead of religious and social concerns, New Englanders were increasingly driven past economical concerns. So what does sexuality have to do with this? Well, bundling was a practise where young men and women would court – engagement- at their parents' homes. As one English language visitor described while traveling through New England wrote, "At their usual time the one-time couple retire to bed, leaving the young ones to settle matters equally they tin can, who later on having sat upwardly equally long every bit they think proper, go to bed also, but without pulling off their undergarments, in club to forestall scandal." So substantially, these young men and women got all snuggly in bed together, simply while yet wearing their undies. I remember we all know what they were actually doing – and that really was the point. Puritan parents weren't fools!

Sarah: When I teach this, it makes my students so giggly and uncomfortable and I love it. It just blows their minds that the Puritans were letting their kids get cozy with their boyfriends and girlfriends in the next room.

Anyway. What was the purpose of bundling? It was actually pretty straightforward: young people were going to have sex. There was little parents, church building officials, or legal authorities could do most that – and they had tried for generations. Then instead, in an era where economic concerns were more pressing than religious ones, it was really important to be able to ensure that if your daughter wound up meaning, you knew who to pin it on and so you didn't end up with an extra mouth to feed and an unmarriageable girl. It was a grade of social control without telling kids not to have sex – which every bit everyone knows, does not work.

Marissa: The historian Richard Godbeer, who is sort of the grandmaster of studying Puritan sexuality, discovered this fantastic vocal from the late 1700s most bundling. I'k but going to read a couple of quotes here:

"In several places where they've heard/their preacher's bold aloud disclaim/that bundling is a burning shame/this likewise was cause of direful rout/and talked and told of all about,/that ministrer's should disapprove/sparks courtship in a bed of love/so justified the custom more/than eastward're was heard or known before"

They're sort of acknowledging that the religious authorities hate this and rail against it, but all information technology actually does is get in more desirable!

Hither's another i:

"A bundling couple went to bed/with all their clothes from foot to caput/that the defense might seem consummate/each one was wrapped in a sheet/but o! this bundling's such a witch/the man of her did catch the itch/and so provoked was the wretch/that she of him a bounder grab'd"

I mean, that's fantastic. And it just totally blows out of the water our ideas about pious and chaste Puritans! Although, granted, we also demand to note once again the variety of New England society by the belatedly  1700s; non anybody who lived in these areas was devoutly religious. Plus, after generations, the religious fervor had died down and there was less deference to religious authorization.

Sarah: It wasn't just premarital sex that Puritan religious government had a difficult fourth dimension decision-making. Sodomy, which could both refer to any kind of same-sex sex , or anal/oral sex betwixt a homo and a adult female was of course highly taboo, and  illegal in Puritan New England.

I desire to pause here for but a moment to clarify something and try to get you all – you all out in that location listening to us – to think like a historian. Information technology's really important to remember that simply because there are laws or strictures confronting something, does non necessarily mean that that act was rejected by all members or even the majority of a society, and it doesn't mean that information technology was ever charged against a person, or whether people were always convicted. So the existence of laws confronting sodomy aren't really enough evidence for us to be able to say that sodomy was highly policed by the Puritans – but that's exactly what we often presume nearly the Puritans!

The only matter that laws against sodomy tells the states for sure is that people were doing information technology. Considering people don't make laws against things that never happen. The puritans were actually not as strict virtually sodomy as you might imagine. Richard Godbeer offers this bang-up example of a man named Nicholas Sension, who was a relatively well off human being in a town in Connecticut. When he was arrested in the late 17 th century for sodomy, his long history of soliciting sex from other men suddenly came tumbling out. He had tried to forcibly become men to submit to him, or had grabbed men's genitals. When he had to share a bed with another man while traveling – which was a very mutual and usually non-sexual event – he tried to come on to his bed-mate. He had conspicuously been doing this for a long fourth dimension – in fact, he had been brought up on charges of sodomy decades before, but zippo had really come of information technology.

Marissa: And so what that really tells usa is not and then much that the Puritans were and then strict that they had these barbaric laws confronting sodomy –  it actually tells us that people weren't all that concerned about Sension's proclivities or aggressive style. He had been arrested in the late 1840s, and so once more in the late 1870s – merely in the meantime, multiple people eventually testified that he had come up on to them, touched them, or whatever in the concurrently. Why hadn't anyone turned him in?

Sarah: Nicholas Sension was a fairly well-off homo, he had a position of respect within the community. He was well-liked. Even some of the young men who gave statements about incidents with Sension talked about him fondly. Richard Godbeer refers to this unwillingness to plow Sension in as a want to not tear the fabric of the community. Because Puritan communities were so shut, and people were so tightly interconnected, in that location was a real want to maintain that before punishing or ostracizing people. Sension was part of the community; his victims, if you want to phone call them that, were more often than not young and in positions of inferiority. People felt unable to accuse Sension because of his social continuing, or felt equally though it was none of their business.

This didn't hateful that 17 th c. New Englanders were totally down with queer folks, or there were no consequences for people who violated codes of sexual conduct. Afterward all, Sension was arrested, put on trial, and sentenced to a harsh chirapsia. What it does tell us is that at that place were many factors that went into New Englanders deciding that a sexual activity criminal offence was worth punishing.

I think it's fascinating how we often believe that at earlier points in American history, at that place just weren't gay people considering society would have and then obviously ostracized or punished them. Simply that is such an oversimplification of people in previous centuries! Of grade there are horrific and numerous examples of how gay people were treated monstrously, but likewise examples of gay people being tolerated, or even integrated into society. People are complex and ever have been.

Marissa: We don't want to run the gamble of painting an overly rosy picture of Puritan opinion on sodomy, though. It was considered a crime against nature. Nosotros should too explicate something virtually how the Puritans defined the word sodomy. Today, we use the term sodomy to refer to anal intercourse, generally between 2 men, simply not always. Only we only started using that give-and-take in that way  in the mid to belatedly nineteen th century. In early on America, the term sodomy referred to any sexual act that was aberrant or deviant.

Sarah: Right, and that ways that it could refer to more than just anal sex. In fact, the category of 'sodomy' included one of the biggest sexual taboos in that location is: bestiality.

Swedish pig farmer Allers Familj Journal 1909 Public Domain Wikimedia Commons

Marissa: Yeah, like you said earlier, when nosotros think about Puritans, nosotros recall near chaste, prudish folks – definitely not bestiality.

Sarah: Yep, people doing information technology missionary, wearing apparel nevertheless on, shoe buckles rattlin'.

Marissa: Simply actually, equally many of us might approximate, bestiality happens in all societies, and has across time. Alfred Kinsey found, in his famous Kinsey Report, that 8% of his male subjects had had sexual contact with animals, with the number shooting upward to nearly 50% for men in rural areas! (Yet another element of rural lodge that cityfolk similar myself know nil about… like 4H and ATVs and burning couches for fun.)

Sarah: Merely as Puritans worried that living in the New World would lead to sexual wantonness, they worried that living in the wilderness would atomic number 82 to increased bestiality. Sexual interaction, or even the suspicion of sexual interaction, between animals and humans had touched off panics in Europe from fourth dimension to time for centuries. In fact, in the tardily medieval menstruation and early modern period, animals were frequently seen as capable of seduction and luring people into sexual acts, and would often be held responsible in actual trials. Many animals were convicted and punished – sometimes by called-for at the stake – for the belief that they had lured people into acts of bestiality. Actually, in some of those cases, the animal was executed while the person – almost e'er a human – was let go because they were too naïve, also stupid, or too otherwise incapable of understanding the weight of their infractions. Our very fine colleagues over at the Footnoting History podcast have a great episode on Medieval Animal Trials, which covers some of these before panics. In fact, even having sex in what nosotros might phone call "doggy style," and what scholars call the "dorsal position" was punishable by ten days of bread and water because it was too similar to the means animals have sex, and put the admirer's … bits … precariously shut to the anus. Sex in this position was considered, at least in medieval Europe, to autumn into the category of sodomy.

Marissa: But we shouldn't overstate the frequency of these events – they were pretty rare in early on mod England. Just eleven cases were tried at the Old Bailey in London between 1674 and 1834, which is extremely low compared to Sweden, which charged 1500 people with bestiality between 1635 and 1754, and executed 500 of those. The English were actually more concerned about aforementioned-sex activity sex.

Medieval and early-modern religious government were, however, worried well-nigh making sure that the line betwixt homo and beast was articulate. They worried that when humans did certain things that were animal-like, they blurred the lines betwixt homo and animal. Humans – men, in their view – were made in God's prototype, and God had endowed humans with sure qualities specifically to place them in a higher place other living things. At that place are writings, for example, of theologians advising that people non swim, considering fish swim, and humans aren't fish. They also worried about how sure "uncivilized" environments might blur the lines between human and creature fifty-fifty further. Men should trim their beards, wear proper wearable, and perform work and other activities during the 24-hour interval, all to make sure that they avoided any association with the animal world – wild hair, going shirtless, or even doing things at nighttime were all animal-like. So animality wasn't just rejected because people idea it was gross, or deviant, but because it was, as ane judge described it in 1607, "committed against the ordinance of the Creator, and order of nature." And again, I just desire to point out that when this approximate described information technology in this way, the crimes he believed went against the ordinance of the Creator were "mankind with mankind, or with fauna beast, or by womankind with animal beast," so he understood bestiality and same-sexual activity sexual activity as each beingness the aforementioned kind of perversion of God'due south plan.

Sarah: So you can encounter how when English folks landed in Due north America, and had to alive in very close proximity to wilderness, one of their fears was a worry that people would begin to become uncivilized – that they would somehow begin to become more animal-like. And in some ways, their fears were realized. Just a few years subsequently the Mayflower landed and the Plymouth colony was established, an English lawyer named Thomas Morton arrived in Plymouth. Morton wasn't a Puritan, and he did not capeesh the strict, religious atmosphere of the colony, so he moved a few miles North to another community chosen Mount Wollaston. He didn't get along with them either, so he eventually only gave upward on finding a community he liked and instead took over Mount Wollaston. How did he exercise that? Information technology'due south a little complicated, only essentially he led a wildcat of indentured servants against the leader of Mountain Wollaston, declared this new group the real community, and intimidated the former authorities into fleeing. Morton then prepare to making this new community, which he named Merrymount, into his own utopia. (You know how nosotros honey utopian communities!!) He hated the Puritans, and set about creating a society that was their opposite: the settlers of Merrymount lived with Algonquin Indians, intermarried and had sexual relationships with Native women, and happily brewed and drank a big quantity of beer. Their Puritan neighbors were horrified, and saw this as clear evidence of what happened to people when they failed to resist the lure of nature. Morton was arrested, sent into exile on an island and destroyed the hamlet. William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth colony, even referred to their actions as "abominable practices," which sort of indicates how they understood living with Native people equally non at all different from living like animals.

Marissa: Not long after, concerns most colonists devolving into animals grew into a full-blown crisis. Historians have identified that betwixt 1640 and 1647, New England experienced a bestiality panic, in which eight men were brought to trial for crimes of bestiality, and 4 were executed. Even after this catamenia, bestiality cases were not uncommon. In 1642, Salem, Mass. authorities brought to trial a young man named Thomas Hackett, who had been witnessed having intercourse with a cow – and non only that, but on a Sunday . (GASP!) Town officials slaughtered the cow in front of Hackett before he himself was hanged. This was a tactic to both shame the convicted party, only also to demonstrate to the community the gravity of the crimes. Also in 1642, Thomas Granger was bedevilled for having sex with a horse, a cow, two goats, v sheep, 2 calves, and a turkey." As role of the trial, Granger had to point out each of the animals he had had sex activity with, which were then slaughtered in forepart of him, before Granger was executed. Why kill the beast? It was really the punishment dictated by the Bible: In Leviticus 20:fifteen, it reads "If a homo lie with a brute, he shall surely be put to expiry, and ye shall slay the beast."

Sarah: One way that New England officials had of detecting instances of bestiality was the offspring of livestock – occasionally, a foal or piglet would seem to deport a resemblance to its homo owner. George Spencer was put on trial, convicted, and executed because one of his sus scrofa bore a piglet that had a bad eye, that looked similar to a Spencer'due south own disfigured centre. In my favorite example of all time, a poor jerk named Thomas Hogg – yep, Hogg – was accused of impregnating a pig because the piglets appeared like him. Because they didn't have an center witness, they instead turned to the hog herself to provide show. They brought the pig to Hogg in his prison prison cell and fabricated him touch her in a sexual way to come across if she would react – and obviously she did. Nevertheless, Hogg refused to confess to the deed, and without corroboration, he was not executed.

Marissa: Some historians have drawn comparisons betwixt these animality panics and the witchcraft panics that took place in colonial New England, and at that place are definitely some important similarities. In the book of Exodus in the Bible, witchcraft and bestiality are lumped together as 2 of the three crimes to exist punished with death.

Exodus 22:xvi-xx reads: "Thou shalt non suffer a witch to live; Whosoever lieth with a creature shall surely be put to death; He that sacrificeth unto whatsoever god, save unto the Lord simply, he shall be utterly destroyed."

Accusations of witchcraft often included animals, the famous "familiars" that seduced women to exercise the devil'due south piece of work, were ofttimes described in sexual terms. Historically, women accused of witchcraft were accused of having sex with evil brute-hybrids, like werewolves, demons, or dogs. However, very few women were always charged with bestiality in colonial New England – instead, these sexual relationships were all understood as part of the path to witchcraft, and well-nigh of them were unprovable. At that place were no centre witnesses to a werewolf or demon having sex with a woman. There's also an important (and distressing) overlap hither for women who bore disabled babies or deformed, stillborn fetuses. Often when a woman delivered such a "monster," they were assumed to have either consorted with the devil or had been impregnated past an animal, and in either case, sometimes defendant of witchcraft. Instead, the two charges – witchcraft and animality – became gendered means of controlling colonists. Bestiality was charged confronting men who challenged sexual norms of Puritan society, while witchcraft was charged against women who challenged authority. (or those who burdened small communities financially.)

William Bradford Public Domain Wikimedia Commons

Sarah: There's another important difference between witchcraft and bestiality. After the Salem Witch Trials in 1692, in that location really were no other significant witch trials in the U.s.. But animality trials continued into the xviii thursday and even the 19 th century. In the xviii thursday century, fears nigh bestiality began to spread out of New England, with a cluster taking identify in the 1750s and 1760s in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. And although bestiality trials sort of vanished in the tardily eighteen thursday century as religious morality was gradually replaced with the Enlightenment emphasis on logic and reason, there were of a sudden two new cases in the 1790s. Ii men, John Farrell and Gideon Washburn, both elderly men in New England, were tried and convicted for committing acts of animality. This is pretty weird, because historians accept suggested the era of the Early on Democracy – or what historians call the menses betwixt roughly the finish of the Revolution and 1850s-ish – was marked by a degree of tolerance of sexual deviance. At present, they weren't open-minded maybe in the same fashion today'southward social club might be, but they weren't prosecuting people right and left, and they were more willing to await the other manner when someone pursued sex activity, say, with people of the same sex. Then why were they convicting old men for apparently having sexual practice with dogs and horses? Well, one theory is that it was function of a reactionary panic to the Enlightenment itself, and the sexual revolution that some believed information technology was bringing most. Enlightenment thinkers rejected the dogmatic obsession the church building (especially the Catholic Church) had with sexuality, and encouraged people to think nigh sexuality as a good for you and normal part of human nature.

Marissa: This didn't sit well with everyone – there was a severe reaction in Europe, specifically England, against deviant sexual beliefs, with the greatest emphasis placed on same-sex sex. Some English language men believed that deviant and promiscuous sexuality had contributed to the French Revolution, and took steps to crack down on any kind of extra-marital sexual activity, even going so far every bit to propose a bill that would have fabricated infidelity punishable by prison time. There was a panic over sodomy, which resulted in more men in England beingness executed for sodomy than murder in the yr 1806. But none of this was really happening in the United States, which was sort of doing the opposite. Even though it was yet a capital criminal offense, Americans only very rarely prosecuted men for sodomy or sexual crimes – just to call up back to the beginning of this episode, we talked nearly the late xviii th- century do of bundling, which was extremely tolerant, for instance, of pre-marital sex. The trials of Farrell and Washburn were the outcome of a fear that Puritan ideals and religious authorities were losing ability and influence in New England, and existence supplanted by the plough toward reason and secularism. Prosecuting these 2 elderly men was a style of trying to reach back to the heights of religious power in New England in the 17 th century.

Sarah: Policing sexuality is always less about the infraction of the actual act, than it is about larger cultural, political, and religious anxieties – and that was admittedly the instance with bestiality in colonial and Early on Republic New England.

Thanks for joining usa for this episode of Dig. Follow the states on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.

Sources:

The Maypole that Infuriated the Puritans http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/maypole-infuriated-puritans/

Doron Due south. Ben-Atar and Richard D. Brownish, Taming Lust: Crimes Against Nature in the Early Republic (Philadelphia: Academy of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)

John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).

Richard Godbeer Sexual Revolution in Early on America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).

Richard Godbeer, "Courtship and Sexual Freedom in Eighteenth-Century America," OAH Magazine of History (July 2004), 9-eleven.

Merry Wiesner-Hanks, Christianity and Sexuality in the Early on Mod World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Do (London: Routledge, 2000).

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Source: https://digpodcast.org/2017/09/10/puritans-sex/

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