Still on Lawrence: Puritanism vs. Libertinism
According to Tocqueville, Americans agree with Lewis that adultery should be condemned because it is the breaking of a contract. Public opinion, he wrote, is "inexorable" against the faults of a married woman who commits adultery: "the woman [in America] can always choose freely and...education has taught her to choose well....the Americans...regard marriage as a contract which is often burdensome but every condition of which the parties are strictly bound to fulfill, because they knew them all beforehand and were at liberty not to bind themselves to anything at all." Democracy in America Vol II, Part III, Ch. 11. (Amazingly, this work too is on the web.)
This has obviously changed, but there is a combination or alternation of puritanism and libertinism which Tocqueville describes, and is recognizable today.
For cases where the majority fears to make laws contrary to the interests of obvious wrong-doers, Tocqueville gives the examples of fraudulent bankruptcy, against which he says there is no American legislation, and the abuse of strong drink leading to violence and crime, with no attempt to control this even by a "duty on brandy." Vol. I, Part II, Ch. 5, "American Democracy's Power of Self-Control."
For a lingering example of puritanism, he gives Sunday closing laws; Vol. I, Part I, Ch. 2. (Note E). In the Online edition, see Appendix E at the back; there should be a reference to it here, at the same point as footnote 29.
Contrary to the business about booze, he didn't quite see the prohibition movement, but it wouldn't have surprised him; he did see the temperance movement begin to organize, and promise to set an example of abstemiousness. Vol. I, Part, II, Ch. 6, "Activity Prevailing," Footnote 1; and Vol. II, Part II, Ch. 5, "Uses of Associations."
Generally speaking, there were votes in the U.S. for no restrictions on booze at all; there would soon be votes for prohibition; but it was hard to foresee when there would be significant votes for a moderate regulatory regime, which Tocqueville obviously regarded as the only sensible approach. The analogy to drugs today is obvious.
I'm not sure what the equivalent would be with a range of family and sexuality issues. Perhaps there was something to be said for the old bastardy laws, as well as laws against adultery? But far less for laws against sodomy, which for some reason are being debated forty years after the other laws were struck down by the Supreme Court?
Illegitimacy cases: Levy v. Louisiana (1968); and Labine v. Vincent (1971).
Were state laws on abortion, often contradictory, hard to enforce, and full of humbug, better than the Supreme Court striking down all such laws at once? This is something I'll have to come back to, drawing partly on Walter Berns. He does not say, as some "originalists" might, that leaving old laws in place would be good simply because the original constitution doesn't clearly say to strike them down; the framers supported both democratic deliberation on such matters, and support for traditional institutions, including the family.
Some possibilities for understanding the U.S.: Libertinism as a holiday from puritanism? (In the chapter on women and adultery, Tocqueville says there may be a significant population of prostitutes; this makes little difference to the society as long as the morals of the majority of women are as he describes). Libertinism as a reward/middle age crisis, after practising puritanism in order to get ahead? Or the reverse, as may be the case with the President: going on too long as an over-aged frat boy, libertine in some ways; then undergoing a conversion to puritanism, just in time to worry about teen-aged daughters?
Tocqueville says modern democracy will display fewer crimes than the old aristocracies, but more vices. (Author's Introduction). Less adultery, along with torture and other things, but more pornography?
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