A Queer History of the United States (ReVisioning History Book 1)

by Michael Bronski

The Puritans in the colonies were on a distinct social and religious mission. While they were reacting against what they perceived as the sexual excesses of Elizabethan culture—they would have disapproved of Shakespeare’s overt sexual puns as being immodest—this was not because they thought pleasure inherently bad. Rather, Puritan theology promoted the intrinsic worth and holiness of the body. This is one of the central reasons the Puritans called for the individual to have a personal, direct relationship with God. As authority in England was being deeply questioned, Puritans were attempting to “find a new master in themselves, a rigid self-control shaping a new personality. Conversion, sainthood, repression, collective discipline, were the answer to the unsettled conditions of society, the way to creating a new order through creating new men.”21 The Puritans readily acknowledged sexual desire and pleasure but insisted that it needed to be expressed within the sanctity of marriage, for the sake of the family, community, and individual. “Society,” claims Alan Bray, “is a process,” and nowhere is this more evident than in Puritan life in the American colonies.22 The “process” of Puritan society was found in the need to constantly refocus on theological “purity”—the essence of holiness and social order. However, the exigencies of surviving in this new land presented situations that led even the strictest Puritans to compromise some principles. Also, as exemplified by Wigglesw...