When I say “Protestant countries” or “Catholic countries”, I am referring to countries where that is the majority or used to be. For example, France would count as a Catholic country and the UK as a Protestant one even though their politics and society have little religious overtones. This is more about undertones and influences.
I’ve noticed that the countries which experimented the most with alcohol Prohibition were Protestant. This may be due to my ignorance but as far as I know, the Prohibition movement never got much traction in Catholic areas and even today, Protestant-majority areas tend to have serious restriction on alcohol sales and quasi-monopolies in the form of State liquor stores which are holdovers from the Prohibition era.
Prohibition had to have broad appeal in the US to become a constitutional amendment. In Canada, the referendum has a majority in all provinces except Catholic Quebec where 4/5 of voters were against it (Prohibition in Canada - Wikipedia)
Prohibition was in large part a result of Protestant women, a subset of feminists and churches who wanted to get rid of what they saw as a male entertainment that harmed women and children.
So far, is this accurate?
I’ve also noticed that the anti-porn movement is more present in Protestant countries than Catholic ones. The main proponents are the same as those who were in favor of Prohibition with the exception that Jewish women are also prominent, perhaps because Jews are more readily accepted than they were a century ago.
So far, is this accurate?
If so, is there some link between these two phenomena? What might it be?
I have put this in General Questions because I am looking for serious attempts at explaining these phenomena rather than slugging matches involving religion and feminism. I am concerned that putting it in GD or IMHO would see the thread degenerate into that, especially since a serious attempt to explain these phenomena might very well include an explanation which is not flattering to religions or subsets of feminism.
Part of the issue was the Protestant, largely rural political force just as it was losing its plurality over the urban. The target demographic to be controlled was those Irish Catholic immigrants, and in Canada the Catholic French and Metis. In some respects, Temperance was an offshoot of Know-Nothingism.
But it wasn’t that simple: those damn Germans, both Catholic and Protestant, loved to drink beer on their day off (Sunday)!
There’s a strong streak of puritanism that manifests itself particularly in some protestant religious ideologies. basically, if it’s fun, if it’s lively, it must be the devil’s work. Worship should be the opposite of fun. Drinking, dancing, singing, decoration (especially in churches), makeup, fancy hair and pretty, colourful clothes, good and plentiful food - all these are “bad”, since they distract from introverted quiet contemplation of God. Some form of these views can be seen in some branches of almost every religion.
In most catholic countries, the church was a part of the establishment. The revolt against the church - Protestantism - was in a way, a revolt against the established order. In fact, when the Church of England - establishment itself - did not go far enough, some factions took it even farther.
Since a lot of the American social culture was established by these puritan factions leaving England, and others who emigrated from northern Europe, I suspect the majority American ethic derived from a more ascetic point of view than the European countries, especially the ones where the reformation did not take root.
It seems that part of the reason why the republican experiment in England under Oliver Cromwell failed, was because the puritan ideals were largely resented by the general population. They may not have liked the King all that much, but they were pretty keen on having a good time whenever they could. Cromwell even tried to abolish Christmas, as well as Easter and Whitsun - all opportunities for the poor people to get drunk and have a ball…
Specific Protestant sects. Anglicans like booze, and Lutherans generally don’t care. The Methodists and more conservative sects like Baptists, as well as “nonconforming” sects were strongly pro-Prohibition. Even today, Catholic and Anglican churches do a wine communion, whereas Methodist and many Baptists use grape juice. And some sects even claim that “wine” in the Bible was alcohol free, which I think doesn’t match Occam’s razor.
Many churches teach Moderation (“drink it if ya got it, but don’t go crazy.”) Some churches/individuals might be Teetotalers (“I shouldn’t drink”) but that’s different from Prohibition (“You shouldn’t drink”). It might be a mistake to judge based on today’s standards, but Prohibition was kind of bipartisan, mixing ultraconservatives and femininists.
State liquor stores - I see not enough information to conclude based on religious history and laws. We have Catholic-founded Maryland (although later taken over by Puritans for awhile) as an ABC state. Then historically-Catholic-but-not-anymore Louisiana doesn’t, nor do RI, NJ, MA, etc., which might suggest there is one. They’re all near New England though, which might be a false correlation. Or that the ethnic groups who went there happened to be Catholic and like booze. #1, #2, and #4 Mormon states UT, ID, and WY have ABC, #3 NV isn’t even sure what a liquor law is. The other southern states are strongly Protestant, but that can only be extrapolated so much into cause/effect.
I’ve seen a picture someone of prohibition supporters(all women) kicking back after a long day of fighting the demon drink and relaxing with some laudanum(opium tincture).
What anti-porn movement? I’m being serious. In the U.S. - and I don’t pretend to speak about anywhere else - there is no modern movement that can be labeled antiporn. Some people are against it, certainly, but the majority of the entire country was once vocally and politically in favor of Prohibition and nothing like that has ever existed here in regard to porn. The acceptance of porn since the early 1970s has in fact been remarkable. Opposition earlier couldn’t be called a movement - it was simply the way the world worked. Of course, there was no feminist movement either in the sense we understand it before the 1970s, and modern-day feminists have a large number of opinions on the subjects, from celebration of the right to do with one’s body as wished to outright scorn. None of that remotely rises to a movement.
Certainly fundamentalist Christian sects have blanket prohibitions on everything they consider sinful, and these groups appear to be larger and politically stronger in the U.S. than elsewhere. That’s the only commonality I know of.
Some states, at least at one time, had local options where individual cities and counties voted to ban or allow alcohol. Voters in urban areas almost always had the most liberal laws the state would allow.
I dunno about Dallas, but it looks like statewide the wetter counties are in the more heavily Hispanic areas, which implies the less Protestant areas (which in Texas that means Baptist or Methodist).
Being less established, protestant churches had to compete for monetary support with such “sins” as alcohol and the gambling, dancing and wanton women found in the venues where it was served. Older, more established churches had state support in many countries to get the outposts (US, Australia, Canada, etc) off the ground. When competing for limited resources, it helps to eliminate your competitors.
I’m not following. In what ways did “established” churches who supported “wet” laws - which for the U.S. overwhelmingly meant the Catholic Church - get state support during the drive for Prohibition, which started in the first half of the 19th century? Are you arguing that the Catholic Church made money off these sins? How did Prohibition cut resources and how did it benefit the Protestant churches, which, BTW, were far more established and powerful in the South and many parts of the Midwest than the Catholic Church ever was? Do you realize that anti-Catholic sentiment was so gigantic that an entire political party - the Know-Nothings - and the Anti-Masonic movement were created to marginalize it long before immigrant Catholics ever won local power in a few large cities? What is the flow of money that you’re talking about?
I do not agree with the second axiom of your proposition. Yes, the italian-background people I know are not stridently “anti-porn”, but the irish-background people I know are extremely, extremely uncomfortable with porn, sex or nakedness of any sort, and form the backbone of the anti- art, porn and erotica movement in AUS.
While that might seem odd to us, it would have made perfect sense at the time. Those women had not spent a week’s wages on their laudanum, nor were they about to go and savagely beat their husbands and children under the influence of said laudanum.
As recently as the early 80s, one could buy pretty hardcore pornographic magazines in most 7-11 stores. Few drugstores in my part of the country didn’t sell Hustler and the like. Elements of the Reagan administration (mostly Ed Meese) persuaded them to stop selling anything racier than the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. I occasionally saw Playboy in these stores five years ago, but not anything like we had in the 70s and early 80s. As for feminist cooperation with these efforts, Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon were rather vocal critics of the porn industry around this time.
I don’t live in America any more and don’t know what’s available, but it ain’t like 1979, I’m sure.
The impetus for the movement was the proliferation of bars; with industrialization, a large number of families consisted of a working husband/father who got paid for their labour, usually on Friday, then a large number would spend their evening in the bar, coming home with substantially less than a full paycheque, leaving their family to starve. The social perception in “enlightened” circles was that this was destroying American societies, and following the self-appointed do-gooder mindset “there oughta be a law!” to correct this.
One commentator on the prohibition side, for example, complained there were no restaurants in town because the restaurants could not compete with “Free Lunch” offered by the taverns. (Hence the expression “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch” - catch being, you had to buy drinks.)
One article I read was about Carrie Nation and her visit to the a Yale student drinking club. By the time, she was more of a bad joke in the prohibition movement - when she showed up in town, everyone hoped she’d do her thing and leave soon. This club in Yale invited her to speak pretending to be a group of reformed alcoholics. After the speech, they gathered for a photo - which “required the lights to be out for setup”. She was holding a glass of water to symbolize reform; with the lights out, others grabbed hidden glasses and cigarettes, and the flash got a picture of her enjoying a drink with the students all holding glasses of booze or cigarettes. Someone thoughtfully doctored the negative to put a cigarette in her hand.
Google pictures of Carrie Nation - she sure fits the part.
The RC, Lutheran and Anglican (Episcopal) churches enjoyed state support in Europe in the days when protestants were supporting prohibition in the US and elsewhere. The prohibition sentiment didn’t just start when the US constitution was amended, but during the mid nineteenth century (check out some of Sarah Josepha Hale’s and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s writing).
The RC , Lutheran and Episcopal churches tended to have financial support from the main body, which did have state support in other countries. This meant that they weren’t competing for family finances in the same way that the Baptists and Methodists were. Hence, to the Baptists, Methodists and other like churches, anything that competed for those dollars became sin.
