82
GORE VIDAL
"The feeling of hatred and the desire of vengeance are important
elements in human nature which ought, in such cases, to be satisfied
in a regular public and legal manner." There is the case not only for
capital punishment, but for public hangings all in the name of the
Old Testament God of vengeance. Or as Lord Goddard puts it, "I do
not see how it can be either non-Christian, or other than praiseworthy,
that the country should be willing to avenge crime." Yet Stephen also
realizes that for practical purposes "you cannot punish anything which
public opinion as expressed in the common practice of society does
not strenuously and unequivocally condemn. To be able to punish, a
moral majority must be overwhelming." But is there such a thing as a
moral majority in sexual matters? Professor Hart thinks not. "The
fact that there is lip service to an official sexual morality should
not lead us to neglect the possibility that in sexual, as other matters,
there may be a number of mutually tolerant moralities, and that even
where there is some homogeneity of practice and belief, offenders may
be viewed not with hatred or resentment, but with amused contempt
or pity."
In the United States the laws determining correct human behavior
are the work of the state legislatures. Over the years these solemn
assemblies have managed to make a complete hash out of it, pleasing
no one. The present tangled codes go back to the founding of the
country. When the Cromwells fell, the disgruntled Puritans left Eng–
land for Holland. To put it baldly, they departed not because they
were persecuted for their religious beliefs but because they were for–
bidden to persecute others for
their
beliefs. Holland took them in, and
promptly turned them out. Only North America was left. Here, as
lords of the wilderness, they were free to create the sort of quasi–
theocratic society they had dreamed of. Rigorously persecuting one
another for religious heresies, witchcraft, sexual misbehavior, they form–
ed that ugly polity whose descendants we are. As religious funda–
mentalists, they were irresistibly drawn to the Old Testament God at
his most forbidding and cruel, while the sternness of St. Paul seemed
to them far more agreeable than the occasional charity of Jesus. Since
adultery was forbidden by the Seventh Commandment and fornication
was condemned in two of St. Paul's memos, the Puritans made adultery
and fornication criminal offenses even though no such laws existed in
England, before or after Cromwell's reign. As new American states
were formed, they modeled their codes on those of the original states.
To this day, 43 states will punish a single act of adulterous intercourse,
while 21 states will punish fornication between unmarried people.
In
