some social/religus/political AHs

Christianty allows Polygamy.

Christanity forbids Alcohol

Tobacco products are made illegal in say 1950.

Judeo Christian tradition does not outlaw Homosexuality.

The ``Sexual revolution'' never happens.

There is no Christian proscripton on Money lending.

the Rc church does not insist on celibacy for priests.

Vatican 2 allows Catholics to use contraceptives with in marriage.

Prohibtion is never repealed in the US.

Islam allows Alcohol

Gambling in the US is tolerated to the postion it is in the UK and
Eire. Sports betting shops in malls and mainstreet.

US leaves it to states to set their alcohol laws...

Could you please slow down your thread-posting? I don't know if I'm the only one but I can't even begin to process one thread before another appears....

I'll consolidate a few into grab bags so don't worry...

1 think they will be re-allowed in the 60s. Prohibition could not survive against a largely Christian nation in the 20s and 30s, and it is doubtful that restricted use of tobacco would survive the sexual revolution and everything that accompanied it. I can see tobacco products being forbidden in the near future as our government is now considerably stronger than it was. If this happens, there will be a huge black market for tobacco.

2 America will be a vastly different place. Of course the sexual revolution was the culmination (and only one of the products) of a long trend in the United States. The sexual revolution was only a part of the "hippie" movement. The hippie movement was due, in part at least, to the inability of the Christian church to adequately defend its faith in the 50s (note the Scopes trial as far back as the 20s). Kids of the Leave it to Beaver era went to non-Christian colleges and found that they could not defend their faith. If the sexual revolution never happens this means that the hippie movement never happens. Tracing it back, I find that this entails a failure of the Modernist movement among Christian colleges at the beginning of the century. Christianity comes out much more strongly against evolution. Even the women's suffrage movement is an early form of this searching for freedom in every area. And so on and so on...... The 60s as we know it never happens. No sexual revolution, no minority rights, no homosexual movement, less predominance of women in everyday life. Sexual crimes are probably less prevalent. America remains much like it does in Leave it to Beaver, only considerably more modernized. Whether that makes for a better or worse American than in OTL, it is not my position to comment.

3 Less sexual crime among priests.

4 Virtually impossible, IMHO. The black market was on such a large scale (basement breweries, etc.) that the government realized it had more than it could handle. The U.S. government is stronger now. Such a thing as prohibition is not unlikely in 50-100 years, if some Middle Eastern country,, doesn' nuke us first ;-).

5 Prohibition on a state-wide scale in the early part of the century. Failure on a state-wide scale.

Straha, what do you mean by defend their faith?

Grey Wolf

Wow. I remember this, back from Straha's post a thread marathon, when the board was young...

When Men were men, I'd yet to have my heart broken , and sheep were nowhere to be found. Oh, those were the days.

ah those younger days....

now, you need an army just to ward off the herds that seem to occupy Chat

In my Social History courses at Uni, we were taught that the sexual revolution came about due to a number of factors happening more or less together.

1. A strong intellecutal/theoretical basis that had emerged (eg feminism, secularism), that led people to analyse and disregard cultural stereotypes and traditional ethics.

2. A boost in higher education, that led to massive numbers of young people benefiting from this.

3. A continuation of the trend of liberalism (in the traditional sense) and civilisation, that had been happening since the Enlightenment (ie easier divirce laws etc).

4. The invention of the Pill, reliable contraception, and antibiotics, that made sex much safer.

5. Unprecedented economic growth that led to the vast majority of the Western population having wealth and freedom they had never had before, particularly for women and young people.

In the 1960s all these factors reached a head, and a sort of critical mass was achieved, leading to rapid and major changes to sexual morality and behaviour. The hippie's and students and young metropolitan communities might have been the first to react to and embrace these changes, or at least embrace them in the most VISIBLE way, but the change in peoples behaviour and beliefs were far more profound and deeply rooted. By the 70s and 80s the societal 'shift', had spread pretty much everywhere in the West.

If there was no proscription against money-lending, I'd expect the situation of the Jews in medieval Europe (and later) to be better. No BS about "blood-sucking rich Jews."

Someone said (possibly on the board, in an "Alternative Stereotypes" thread) that Jews would instead be stock comedy figures (country bumpkins with strange religious views) instead of being hated by everyone.

We have state and county prohibition. Both total and proof (where the alcohol percentage is regulated) prohibition are in existence in America. There are many regulations on hours of service and delivery mechanisms. Alcohol is tightly regulated in America.

Tobacco didn't make it to Europe till after 1500. Christianity might have outlawed alcohol, poppies, and coffee/tea, if it had seemed to be a good idea at the time. Coffee was not common outside Ethiopia, nor tea outside China 2000 years ago. I don't think it existed outside those areas. The teas they had were rose or other native European plants prior to about 1500.

The sexual revolution was antibiotic and demographically based. Contraceptives are not perfect for stopping STDs. Penicillin was a great insurance against syphillis, and (streptomycin?) against gonorhea. Demographics meant that there were too many women of the age of the baby boomers. There weren't enough older men for the women to marry and so they needed to be more sexually active to attract men from 1965 to about 1985. Because of immigration the baby boom is still continuing. There are so many immigrants we haven't run short of younger women yet.

But if the sexual revolution was based in shifting demographics, how do you explain it as a Western movement? It didn't just happen in the US. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, and most of Western Europe experienced exactly the same thing, at exactly the same time. Given that what these countries have in common is a socio-economic-technological culture, surely the sexual revolution has its basis in that?