The Puritans and Sex

Many years ago America was inhabitated by a very prominent and religious group of people who, although lived by very strict standards, still managed to have a pretty normal and daily sex life. These individuals were known as the Puritans. Known for colonizing a large portion of the east coast, the Puritans went through quite a deal of turmoil. A large portion of their population was off at war, while another portion was dealing with diseases that they had never even seen before. Regardless, the Puritans maintained a strict religious lifestyle and viewed marriage as sacred. So sacred that the rules regarding sex were sometimes ridiculous. Any non marital sex or any non-reproductive activities were seen as forbidden. This included homosexual sex, masturbation, anal sex, and oral sex. [2] If you chose to violate these rules then you could be punished in many different ways. Some of these punishments included being fined, whipped, or even being publicly shamed in the form of a scarlet letter. In order to understand where exactly these ideologies come from, you have to look into the past. In the Victorian Era, industrialization started to sweep the country and the value of children in the workforce dropped dramatically. Because of this, couples began to limit the amount of children that they originally wanted to have. This was made possible primarily because of the invention of the condom which caused marital fertility rates to drop drastically from the 1800’s to the 1900’s. So how did the puritans view sex within marriage? The complete opposite. The Puritans said that sex was an extremely important part of marriage and should be done in a happy fashion. They didn’t just see sex as something that was desirable in marriage, but instead as something that was necessary and essential to their society. In fact often times marriage was described primarily in the eyes of sex only. [1] As William Perkins stated: “the lawful conjunction of the two married persons; that is, of one man and one woman into one flesh.” As you can see, the act of sex was very important to marriage and created a so called Godly union between the couples in the mind and body. Sadly with the changing of technology and new ideas coming abroad throughout the 1800’s, the Puritans eventually lost the strict ideals that they believed in and the Victorian view of sex was changed into something that revolved around something else: love.

1. Challies, Tim. "Challies.com." The Puritans and Sex. N.p., 06 Sept. 2009. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.

2. Wade, Lisa. "Sociological Images." Sociological Images RSS. N.p., 15 Feb. 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.