James Fitzjames Stephen Quotes
To try to regulate the internal affairs of a family, the relations of love or friendship, or many other things of the same sort, by law or by the coercion of public opinion, is like trying to pull an eyelash out of a man's eye with a pair of tongs. They may put out the eye, but they will never get hold of the eyelash
Stephen, James Fitzjames. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Smith, Elder, & Co., 1873.
The then current example was with same sex marriage. Some people who claimed that their religion declared same sex marriage as a sin and prohibited their aiding and abetting that activity. As a result, they claimed that their right of religious freedom allowed a county clerk to refuse to issue the marriage license or a hotel to refuse to allow a gay couple to rent their facility for a wedding, or a retail store to refuse to sell the couple bedding.
This was an incredibly radical notion at the time. For Catholics, there was no divorce of any kind allowed. And under the Church of England rules, a husband could get a divorce for a wife’s adultery. The social stigma of the rigid English society of the time was enough to make couples stay together long after they had lost affection and were even involved with others. Shelly saw this as a freedom and human rights issue.
Burrhus Frederic Skinner. Skinner was speaking in a scientific, technical sense. No one is free, in the sense that he is not conditioned by his interaction with his environment and his society. However different cultures can condition its members to act independently from different forces in society and behave originally. Everyone is conditioned by his/her society; the conditioning methods are more or less coercive. Those that use negative reinforcers tend to be tyrannical, cruel and inhumane. Those that use positive reinforcers tend to be what we call free,
The country had just gotten rid of Prohibition. However, there was substantial censorship of literature on the part of the Post Office, then a government agency. Abortion was then illegal in every state, and in many states it was a criminal offence to sell or distribute condoms. Homosexuality was a crime in most states and it disqualified a person from Federal employment as did a woman who had borne a child out of wedlock. Films were censored, and in some states, the only legal position for a married couple to have intercourse was the so called “missionary position”. All others were often a crime. Store owners could not open on Sunday, and Christian prayers were compulsory in many areas of society.
Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, 1st Baronet, KCSI was an English lawyer, judge and writer.
