Introduction to Policing Morality
Throughout American history, the practice of policing morality has been everpresent in legal and social contexts. From banning interracial relationships to criminalizing prostitution, those who possess power in society have repeatedly solidified their moral standards into legal codes in an attempt to prevent deviance from the dominant culture's beliefs and values. Morality laws are highly contested, as they can and often do infringe on individual freedom on the purely subjective basis of "morality," while unfairly targeting the actions of women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community.
Morality laws are equally as complicated as the idea of morality itself. What is “wrong” enough to get established as illegal, and who are the people who get to categorize certain actions as such? The values and morals of the dominant cultural group in society are most prominent when establishing morality laws, but what happens when these dominant ideals do not mesh with ideals from (or actively target) minority cultural groups?
In Fairfax County, Virginia, morality laws played an interesting role in developing and sustaining social opinions and prejudices from the middle of the 19th century to the end of the Reconstruction Era in 1877. While other scholars have written about morality laws in different areas and periods throughout Virginia's history, there is a gap in the history of morality laws in Fairfax County.
Scholars have long explored how the United States tried to govern morality throughout the nineteenth century. For example, Joshua D. Rothman’s Notorious in the Neighborhood focuses heavily on the social taboos and morality laws specifically surrounding interracial relationships, drawing on evidence of the many divorce suits brought on by the crime of interracial adultery.[1] This book covers almost 100 years and the entire state of Virginia, but helps contextualize the wider culture toward morality laws, specifically interracial adultery, in the area. Similarly, Intimate Matters by John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman covers trends in morality politics and the policing of sexuality over 300 years and cites examples from multiple states in the nation.[2]
On a narrower scope, Pippa Holloway’s Sexuality, Politics, and Social Control in Virginia covers sexual politics in the state from the early to mid-twentieth century, with a focus on how upper-class whites targeted minority populations with morality laws to preserve white supremacy in Virginian society. These morality laws focused on interracial marriage, prostitution, and controlling venereal disease in minority communities. While she focuses on a period past what is discussed in this project, it shows how the laws and sentiments of the late 19th century bled into the “modern” era.
This project aims to explore the idea of morality in Fairfax, Virginia in the second half of the 19th century by researching and discussing the morality laws that were present in this era. What activities did the morality laws target? How were moral transgressions policed and punished? Were morality laws enforced equally across the community? Through these questions, a picture of late 19th-century Fairfax County morality emerges, and it isn’t pretty. Through prejudiced laws, sensationalism, and unequal enforcement, morality laws themselves were disproportionally damaging to marginalized communities and served as a reflection of the perverse and discriminatory “morality” of Fairfax and the broader Northern Virginia area during the Reconstruction Era.
[1] Joshua D. Rothman, Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
[2] John. D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, 1st ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1988).
[3] Pippa. Holloway, Sexuality, Politics, and Social Control in Virginia, 1920-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).