Private Life Quotes
Both the United States and Canada had laws regulating the sexual behavior of citizens in the privacy of their own homes. It was not just homosexuality that the state attempted to control. Even the specific positions and methods of heterosexual intercourse were controlled by some states. Oral sex, certain positions of intercourse and other “details” could put a person in jail. Canada, a parliamentary nation, changed this by legislation. In the United States, it was the Supreme Court decisions protecting privacy that invalidated these old sexual role restrictions and prescriptions. For example, just 4 years before this quotation was made, 1963, the state of Connecticut was ordered (Griswald v. Connecticut) to release a pharmacist for the “crime” of filling a doctor’s prescription for condoms for a married couple where the wife would likely die if she became pregnant and carried the baby to term.
A Bill was being debated to control theaters and plays. At the time in England, playwrights would commonly write dialoge ridiculing politicians of the day. Lord Chesterfield was opposed to the proposed cencorship.
He refused to answer questions about an alleged affair he was carrying on, and his estrangement from his partner. (He was not married to the “First Lady”. France is much more sophisticated about the sex lives of politicians than is the United States. In addition, French politicians get much more of a zone of privacy from the press—much like that of the United States in the middle of the 20th century.
Her sister, Mary, the previous Queen, had over 200 Englishmen burned at the stake for their Protestant beliefs. Elisabeth wanted no part of the government trying to determine or regulate the religious beliefs of Englishmen.
