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Life IS history in the making. Every word we say, everything we do becomes history the moment it is said or done. Life void of memories leaves nothing but emptiness. For those who might consider history boring, think again: It is who we are, what we do and why we are here. We are certainly individuals in our thoughts and deeds but we all germinated from seeds planted long, long ago.

Friday, April 22, 2016

It really happened...Seduction Made Illegal!

Today's History Lesson

Within today's society promiscuity is not uncommon nor is premarital sex. In fact, acts of seduction occur regularly. One can be sexy, sneaky or sexy & sneaky. It's all in the fun of the game...and quite a game it has become. Let's face it...the rosebud lips and slow-as-molasses sexiness wins over every time. But...there was a time when seduction was illegal and rules of attraction when broken warranted jail time or became a marriage ceremony!

This Day in History: April 22, 1886

Ohio passes a statute that makes seduction unlawful. Covering all men over the age of 18 who worked as teachers or instructors of women, this law even prohibited men from having consensual sex with women (of any age) whom they were instructing. The penalty for disobeying this law ranged from two to 10 years in prison.



Of course, this happenstance in Ohio was not the first of its kind. It is just the one that happened on this day in history.
  • In Virginia, a bizarre rule of attraction prohibited a man from "illicit connexion (variant spelling of connection)" with an unmarried woman of chaste character if pre-empted by a promise of marriage. 
  • New York established a similar law in 1848 making it illegal to “under promise of marriage seduce any unmarried female of previous chaste character." 
  • The seduction statute made it into Georgia with its southern version making it unlawful for men to “seduce a virtuous unmarried female and induce her to yield to his lustful embraces, and allow him to have carnal knowledge of her.”

While such laws were sporadically enforced, there were a few men who suffered the consequences.
In Michigan, a man was convicted of three counts of seduction, but the appeals court did everything in its power to overturn the decision. It threw out two charges because the defense reasoned that the woman was no longer virtuous after the couple’s first encounter. The other charge was overturned after the defense claimed that the woman’s testimony–that they had had sex in a buggy–was medically impossible.
On some occasions, women used these laws in order to coerce men into marriage. A New York man in the middle of an 1867 trial that was headed toward conviction proposed to the alleged victim. The local minister was summoned, and the trial instantly became a marriage ceremony.

If you think all of this is totally bizarre check out the...

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