How the Pilgrims shaped our sex lives

Brian Alexander • E-mail

We here at Sexploration have decided that the true meaning of Thanksgiving has become lost amid the annual Detroit Lions loss, the Macy’s parade and the midnight stampede into the nearest Wal-Mart. We’d like to see America return to quietly gathering with family and friends to remember our Pilgrim forefathers.

And what better way to kick off this national revival than to answer the question everybody seated around the giblets and stuffing and space-age jellied cranberries has, but never asks: Did these people ever have sex?

Of course they did. Babies were born and they didn’t pop out of the pumpkin pie.

The question is understandable, though, because the Pilgrims have a reputation as a pretty dour bunch; if one moved in next door, you probably would not invite him to your next boozy leather 'n lace Halloween costume party.

And, true to their reputation, they spent a lot of time thinking about how to punish lust, according to a remarkable online archive of texts and scholarly commentaries assembled by anthropologists at the University of Virginia, including James Deetz, Patricia Scott Deetz, Christopher Fennell and Lisa M. Lauria.

Even now, the Pilgrims' views still inform debate about sexuality in this country.

Though there was no formal criminal code at the time of the first Thanksgiving in the autumn of 1621, everybody knew what was expected because they were intimate with the source of Pilgrim law, the Bible. They were, after all, the religious right of their day, and they thought they had been guided to America and requested by God to establish laws based on Biblical teachings “for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith" as the Mayflower Compact stated.

To this day there are some in this country who believe sex laws should be Biblically based (and many old sex laws still on the books are, in fact, taken almost straight out of the Bible), but even most social conservatives might balk at that. The Pilgrims, however, did not.

Leviticus provided their guidance and that Old Testament book is not exactly nuanced. Sodomy? Death. Bestiality? Death. Man has sex with his daughter-in-law? Death. Adultery? Death. You get the picture.

The laws of Plymouth Colony echo Leviticus. You could be sentenced to death for sodomy, rape, buggery and, for a time, adultery. (Sodomy and buggery might be synonymous to us, but buggery apparently referred more to bestiality.)

Some Christian preachers today quote Leviticus 20, approvingly arguing that both the Old and New Testament are the infallible word of God.

And on his farm he had a sheep...
In practice, though, even the Pilgrims did not typically enforce death for sex. In fact, only one person was put to death for a sex crime in the colony, poor Thomas Graunger, a teenage farm boy who, perhaps flush with the surge of hormones, turned to those he knew best. His story could make you look at the Thanksgiving turkey in a whole new way.

Governor William Bradford recounted the tale:

“He was this year detected of buggery, and indicted for the same, with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey … He was first discovered by one that accidentally saw his lewd practice towards the mare. (I forbear particulars.) Being upon it examined and committed, in the end he not only confessed the fact with that beast at that time, but sundry times before and at several times with all the rest of the forenamed in his indictment.”

As punishment, he was forced to watch all the animals killed. At first, the court had a problem figuring out which sheep Thomas favored — sheep looking pretty much alike — but Thomas helpfully pointed out his sex partners. After being killed, they were buried in a pit, and then Thomas himself was hanged. If you wonder what the animals did to deserve it, Leviticus was cited by the court: “If a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death; and ye shall slay the beast.”

Though Thomas was the only person executed for a sex crime, punishments were still brutal. Even for lesser crimes, like fornication, you could receive whippings, brandings, wearing a Hawthorne-esque scarlet letter, time in the stocks, fines and banishment. Yet if court records are any indication, there was no shortage of colonists willing to tempt fate. 

MORE FROM SEXPLORATION

Sexploration Section Front

Dangerous liaisons: Why we find vampires sexy When she earns more, he aims to please Allergic to sex? It really can happen Marriage eludes high-achieving black women If sex is a yawn, you may actually be turned on Marriage thrives despite our evolving sex lives Yes! Yes! Oh, no! Coming oh so close to orgasm Sick or sexy? When he's ‘Daddy’ in the bedroom Ah-ah-ah-choo! Orgasms make her nose stuffy Picturing sex: Kinsey explores what turns us on Sexploration Section Front   Add Sexploration headlines to your news reader: