PART 13
EARLY AMERICA
SEX, MARRIAGE, CHILDREN, GAYS, LESBIANS, BOYS AS GIRLS, ABORTION,
BREECHING, FAMILY AND OTHER MYTHS


PREMARITAL SEX AND BASTARDY

Premarital sex seems to have been tolerated as long as it was, indeed,
premarital, but couples who delivered before term after marriage were sti=

punished, did penance and made public confession for their premarital
lusts. Late in the period a marked rise occurred in premarital conception
rates, and this has been seen as a rebellion by the young to acquire say =

spousal selection on the basis of affection. Surveys of premarital sex ha=

compared marriage dates and birth dates. In England, during the colonial
period, between 10 percent and 30 percent of children were born within
eight months of marriage. In the early Chesapeake the rate was about 30
percent, but then dropped over time. In early New England it was about 10
percent, but rose to near 33 percent in the late period.

Bastardy was problematic in many colonies. Because bastards (WHORESONS)
became a social burden, most colonies proscribed bastardy with severe
penalties. As a result, the rate was kept down to under about 3 percent,
with some segments, such as Quaker congregations, not recording a single
case until 1780, and others running under one per one thousand live birth=

Opposing this, however, was the economic value derived from impregnating
slaves in the Chesapeake region, where rates ran as high as twenty-six per
one thousand despite similar statutory penalties.

Punishments for bastardy included whipping (ten to forty lashes) and fines
as high as five pounds. Men, owning property, were often fined, while
women, without property to pay a fine, could only accept whipping. Mothers
of bastards occasionally engaged in infanticide to avoid both costs and
stigma. Because these women usually claimed stillbirth, hiding a stillborn
***** was a capital offense, and by the later period real stillbirths
required witnesses so as to prevent conviction for murder. Preachers
sermonized at the executions of such convicts on the theme of the ultimate
destructiveness of illicit sex. Prosecutions, however, were uncommon.
SOURCE: The Writer's Guide, Everyday Life in Colonial America From 1607 -
1783. Dale Taylor. Weiter's Digest Books (1997) p 126

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Pre-marital Sex in America Discussion/March 1998
http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~women/threads/disc-sex.html

-------------------------------------------------------------------------=

Sexual Revolution in Early America
This is the first comprehensive history of sexuality in early America. ...
of unchurched" marriage," engaging in premarital sex to determine
compatibility, ...
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/288/10/1294

Full Text
Sexual Revolution in Early America
Nye
JAMA.2002; 288: 1294-1295.

[You have to register. You may have to purchase the article or get it from
your local library via interlibrary loan]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------=

From: Buckeye-elo
Date: Tues, Feb 11 2003 10:13 am
Groups: misc.kids, misc.education, alt.atheism,
alt.politics.liberalism, alt.politics.republicans,
alt.politics.usa.constitution, alt.politics.usa.republican

"Larry R Harrison Jr" wrote:

:|And there you have the problem with this country since the 60s--the ri=

:|casual sex. That's the whole thing--if you don't think you'd want the =

:|of your desire to raise your child, you SHOULDN'T be having sex with t=

:|Period.

Sex has been going on since human beings have been on this planet.
You can go to most libraries and find a vast storehouse of historical
information duplicating ancient writings, talking about ancient drawings
and paintings etc regarding sex, but within a framework of a marriage a=

not within such frameworks.

So called "casual" sex didn't begin with the 60s.
White men having sex with blk slave women was pretty casual for the white
men is one example.

The roaring 20s was pretty uninhibited

I have another book here: The Century of Sex, Playboy's History of the
Sexual Revolution, 1900-1999 by James R. Petersen.
It documents that history throughout the 20th Century and the data does n=

agree with your claim above.
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=

Here is one comment on the subject of sex:

Our conceptions of the time are dominated by a few powerful illustrations
of Pilgrim scenes that most people over forty stared at year after year on
classroom walls: the baptism of Pocahontas, the Pilgrims walking through
the woods to church, and the first Thanksgiving. Had these classroom walls
also been graced with colonial scenes of drunken revelry and barroom
brawling, of women in risque ball-gowns, of gamblers and rakes, a better
balance might have been struck. For the fact is that there never were all
that many Puritans, even in New England, and non-Puritan behavior abounde=

From 1761 through 1800 a third (33.7%) of all first births in New England
occurred after less than nine months of marriage (D. S. Smith, 1985),
despite harsh laws against fornication. Granted, some of these early birt=

were simply premature and do not necessarily show that premarital
intercourse had occurred, but offsetting this is the likelihood that not
all women who engaged in premarital intercourse would have become pregnan=

In any case, single women in New England during the colonial period were
more likely to be sexually active than to belong to a church----in 1776
only about one out of five New Englanders had a religious affiliation.
The Churching of America, 1776-1990, Winners and Losers in Our Religio=

Economy, ROGER FINKE and RODNEY STARK,RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS
New Brunswick, New Jersey (1994) p. 22
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=

I also have a book here titled"

Sexual Revolution in Early America, by Richard Godbeer, and while I
haven;'t red it yet, I am willing to go on the record right now and sday =

won't support your opinions on this matter.

Here are a few words from the flyleaf:

Sexual Revolution in Early America, Richard Godbeer, The John Hopkins
University press, (2002)

In 1695, John Miller, a clergyman traveling through New York, found it
appalling that so many couples lived together without ever being married
and that no one viewed "ante-nuptial fornication" as anything scandalous =

sinful. Charles Woodmason, an Anglican minister in South Carolina in 1766,
described the region as a "stage of debauchery" in which polygamy was "ve=

common," "concubinage general," and "bastardy no disrepute." These
depictions of colonial North America's sexual culture sharply contradict
the stereotype of puritanical abstinence that persists in the popular
imagination.

In Sexual Revolution in Early America, Richard Godbeer overturns
conventional wisdom about the sexual values and customs of colonial
Americans. His account spans two centuries and most of British North
America, from New England to the Caribbean, exploring the social,
political, and legal dynamics that shaped a diverse sexual culture. Drawi=

on diaries, letters, and other private papers, as well as legal records a=

official documents, Godbeer's absorbing narrative uncovers a persistent
struggle between moral authorities and both popular customs and individual
urges.

Godbeer begins with a discussion of the complex attitude that the Puritans
had toward sexuality. Although believing that sex could be morally
corrupting, they also considered it to be such an essential element of a
healthy marriage that they excommunicated those who denied "conjugal
fellowship" to their spouses. He next examines the ways in which race and
class affected the debate about sexual mores -anxieties about Anglo-Indian
sexual relations, the sense of sexual entitlement that planters held over
their African slaves, and white worries about the debasement that might
follow intimacies with "savages." In the end he finds a fundamental shift
during the eighteenth century away from a sexual culture rooted in an
organic conception of society and toward a more individualistic definition
of sexual desire and fulfillment, which in turn prompted debate about the
relationship between freedom and responsibility. Today's moral critics, in
their attempts to convince Americans of the social and spiritual
consequences of unregulated sexual behavior, often harken back to a more
innocent age. As this groundbreaking work makes clear, America's sexual
culture has always been vibrant and contentious.

***************************************************************
You are invited to check out the following:

The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm

American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm

The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html

[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]

HRSepCnS =B7 Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/

[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the US and a couple from overseas as well]

***************************************************************
. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why =

page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisne=

256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
. . .
****************************************************************
USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote

"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"

That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.

It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.

*****************************************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
****************************************************************