Legal change on sexual morality tracks shifts in the larger society
Evidence
On issues of sexual morality, law necessarily reflects what is happening in the larger society. The sexual revolution, it turns out, was not a one-​night stand, so to speak. The old morality decayed and went right on decaying; in the last two generations, there has been tremendous pressure to change the law, to take the stigma of criminality (and stigma in general) out of behavior that does not fit the old models. That famous lustful couple, “consenting adults,” no longer risks arrest and prosecution, no matter what they do with or to each other, and whether they are gay or straight. — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 1436
Categorization
- recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
- XREF: connects to: Laws are symptoms of social morality, not its cause — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 823; Social demand, not court rulings, drove the pornography flood — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1011; Changing sexual morality did not repeal the Mann Act until 1986 — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 1205 (+9 more)
Broader Connections
- Legal prohibition causes attitudinal change rather than merely reflecting it
#contradicts(0.85) — , The Rod and the Child, 10919 - Legal prohibition of corporal punishment drives attitudinal shifts rather than merely reflecting them
#contradicts(0.85) — , The Rod and the Child, 8150 - Fixed moral universals regulate and restrain changeable legal norms
#contradicts(0.82) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 658 - Law shapes society while remaining society’s creation
#corroborates(0.80) — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 1333 - Morality precedes society and society merely manipulates an already-existing moral structure
#contradicts(0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 514 - Society’s responses to sexual behavior vary widely across cultures and time periods.
#expands(0.75) — Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, 1481 - Moral panics can reshape law and social policy
#qualifies(0.72)