“Then it is interesting,” Gürtner reported, “to see what legal consequences are attached to sexual union. That too is variable. All sorts of expressions appear: ‘illegal’ and ‘void,’ ‘absolutely void,’ ‘utterly null and void.’ ‘Prohibited’ also sometimes appears. From these shifting and not very sharply juristically defined words it can be seen that civil law consequences attach in all cases, and criminal consequences in a great number of cases.”95 This was the critical point: In America there were “criminal consequences.”
