Once Very Serious Laws Which Lessened Substantially Over Time!

In Puritan England witchcraft was considered to be an extremely serious crime and many in particular fiesty women were murdered by the state after having been accused of it! Being a communist during the McCarthy era in the USA, probably not much consequence today. In Ireland, from victorian times to the late 1960s, women who to use an absurd phraise got themselves pregnant outside marriage, were either forced to flee the nation or were incarcerated in 'Magdellan Laundries' in conditions worse than the average prison run by religious orders forced to do have laundry cleaning for life to 'Purge themselves of sin' for life! Their children were often adopted by catholic couples in the USA, with money going to those orders! BTW the 'Daddys' suffered absolutely no consequences! Today in Ireland, a very high percentage of births are outside marriages and it's widely accepted!
So what were considered the great crimes of the past that now barely register a mention?
 
In Puritan England witchcraft was considered to be an extremely serious crime and many in particular fiesty women were murdered by the state after having been accused of it! Being a communist during the McCarthy era in the USA, probably not much consequence today. In Ireland, from victorian times to the late 1960s, women who to use an absurd phraise got themselves pregnant outside marriage, were either forced to flee the nation or were incarcerated in 'Magdellan Laundries' in conditions worse than the average prison run by religious orders forced to do have laundry cleaning for life to 'Purge themselves of sin' for life! Their children were often adopted by catholic couples in the USA, with money going to those orders! BTW the 'Daddys' suffered absolutely no consequences! Today in Ireland, a very high percentage of births are outside marriages and it's widely accepted!
So what were considered the great crimes of the past that now barely register a mention?

Interracial sex for one. Just 50 years ago, a substantial minority of the U.S. population actually would have been horrified at such a thought and most of them would have supported laws against it. Nowadays, about the only people who even care are those pining for the days when segregation was king the South and McCarthyite 'anti-communist' paranoia....which is still a fair number, but they're not nearly as influential these days.
was everywhere.
 
Not ilegal...

Actually, being a Communist in the 1950's wasn't ilegal at all--though men who tried (and succeeded!) in subverting our Constitution treated it as if it were. The US Constitution is often pushed to the limits and beyond by people of all stripes. McCarthy finally got stopped.
 
Amazing that so many of them have sexual matters at the core or deal with the horriffic abuse of women! Homosexual practices have thankfully been deemed maistream over time, at one stage the punishment for engaging in male to male sodomy was hanging and worse in Britain certainly in the 1600s.
 
Playing or watching football: Technically illegal in England from medieval times right through until some point in the latter half of the 20th century, originally because it took men away from archery practice...
 
Blasphemy; unfortunately still an issue across much of the world, but it is no longer so in Europe or North America. Something which used to carry a death sentence, no longer considered a crime at all, is about as big a movement as you can get I think.
 
Blasphemy; unfortunately still an issue across much of the world, but it is no longer so in Europe or North America. Something which used to carry a death sentence, no longer considered a crime at all, is about as big a movement as you can get I think.

Actually, in Italy it is still illegal on paper and may be fined, unless they abolished that old comma recently while I wasn't watching. In practice, in many parts of Italy blasphemous swearing was and is widespread in common language without anybody objecting much.
 

Thande

Donor
The witchcraft laws thing are often exaggerated (at least as far as they apply to England) precisely because writers in the Enlightenment period and the 19th century wanted to paint their ancestors as being ignorant savages and emphasise how far removed they were from them. In reality there are only about 250 recorded executions of witches in England over a three-hundred-year period from 1400 to 1700 (the witchcraft laws were repealed in all but name in the 1720s as part of Enlightenment policy). There will have been more summary executions by mob justice, but when the legal system was functioning, it acknowledged that it was easy for people to accuse their neighbours of being witches without evidence, and so used a massive jury with multiple checks and balances, meaning the vast majority of people accused of witchcraft were acquitted. Given that records are incomplete, estimates as to the total number of official executions for 1400-1700 range from about 300 to 2,000. The witch-hunts wouldn't be remembered at all if it hadn't been in the interests of the aforementioned writers to use them as "evidence" of their ancestors' "inferiority".
 
Another is...

Bribery, which was a normal part of business throughout the world but is now officially a No-No in the West. It still does happen in the West these days, of course, and is common in other parts of the world.
 
Bribery, which was a normal part of business throughout the world but is now officially a No-No in the West. It still does happen in the West these days, of course, and is common in other parts of the world.

It is important to remind this - bribery and corruption are not only something of 'backward states'...
 
Actually, being a Communist in the 1950's wasn't ilegal at all--though men who tried (and succeeded!) in subverting our Constitution treated it as if it were. The US Constitution is often pushed to the limits and beyond by people of all stripes. McCarthy finally got stopped.

I was going to mention that myself. You could get fired, get snubbed by all your neighbors, and most people would believe any visous gossip they heard about you but you couldn't be fined or imprisoned just for being a Communist.
 
I was going to mention that myself. You could get fired, get snubbed by all your neighbors, and most people would believe any visous gossip they heard about you but you couldn't be fined or imprisoned just for being a Communist.

Well, isn't that the same only by less legal, insidious way? :rolleyes: what an HUGE difference. It was surely the continuation of the same.
 
Amazing that so many of them have sexual matters at the core or deal with the horriffic abuse of women! Homosexual practices have thankfully been deemed maistream over time, at one stage the punishment for engaging in male to male sodomy was hanging and worse in Britain certainly in the 1600s.

Sodomy was a criminal offense in Britain until 1969. And it was enforced. Ever heard of Alan Turing? Considered the father of computer science and artificial intelligence. His codebreaking contributed greatly to World War II. His incredible intelligence and contributions to his country did nothing to keep him from getting a choice between prison and chemical castration when outed. He chose castration, but then died after eating a cyanide-laced apple (it was ruled suicide, but his mother was convinced it was an accident).
 
An ongoing one - the ban on abortions in Northern Ireland at least. They used to prosecute backstreet abortionists and doctors were forbidden to offer the service, now the GP quietly refers the woman to England or Scotland.

Stupid situation all the same. :mad:
 
Well, isn't that the same only by less legal, insidious way? :rolleyes: what an HUGE difference. It was surely the continuation of the same.

Getting fired is far less serious than being in prison. You can always move to another neighborhood to get away from the snubbing and rumors but you can't move away from a felony conviction!
 
Getting fired is far less serious than being in prison. You can always move to another neighborhood to get away from the snubbing and rumors but you can't move away from a felony conviction!

Well, it's rumors who kill at times (I bet suicides % rised in those days) and well... Maybe a deliberate politic to look away.

You find that really better, social ostracism?
 
Sodomy was a criminal offense in Britain until 1969. And it was enforced.
Enforced sometimes, especially if people were blatant about it (or were VIPs whose rivals pushed the law into action), but not generally a very high priority for the police to investigate...
 
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