Morality In Early Colonial America

From the family unit to the national state, each societal group is held accountable by the laws of their own creation. Whether through coercion or incentive, each member of the group agrees to abide by these laws. Yet were do these laws arise from? The answer is morals. Though some well-meaning idealists might wish for laws based on logic, it has been historically shown that many societies base their laws on a collective sense of morality. So, in a sense, laws are a reflection of society and vice versa. Yet societies are not stagnant entities and their standards of morals can and do change with the passage of time. One such example is the United States.
Dating back to the early colonial period, morality was a great influence on early American …show more content…
The first is to deal punishments against lawbreakers. The second is to control the behaviors of society. This was no different in the puritan communities of the colonies. Though it might seem alien to our contemporary view of the United States, the colonies were a vastly different place. At the time, urban centers were vastly smaller than what they are today and small, rural villages were essentially the norm. In fact, many of these communities were small enough that each of the inhabitants knew each other on a personal basis. But what these communities all held in common was a strong association of morality with religion. As such, many laws of the early colonial period were served the purpose of enforcing Christianity. To many of the colonies, there was very little distinction between sin and crime. Any act considered evil by the bible was considered a crime regardless if consent was given or not (Friedman, pg.76). Acts that we would consider private issues or “Victimless Crimes”, such as fornication, adultery, public drunkenness, and gambling, were seen not only as crime against their …show more content…
This argument could not be any more wrong. Unlike in the colonial period and the 19th century, there has been a trend of using morality give rights to those that had been previously discriminated against. In the civil rights movements, it was the interpretation of morality from southern black Christians. When the white church did not give enough support to the cause of the civil rights movement, leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr would describe the church “as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century” (King, pg.9). In a more contemporary example, morality has been an overt influence on the advancement of gay rights. Whether one was religious or not, many people viewed their denial of rights as abhorrent. In fact, it was the moral course of action to give the LGBT community marriage rights and civil protections. But even in this day and age, the morality of the religion still remains as part of American law if but a shadow of what it once was. Victimless crimes, such as public drunkenness and prostitution, are still considered crimes in the eyes of the law. The prohibition of the 20th century has transformed into the so called drug war, were drugs such as marijuana, are outside the respectable norms of society and therefore