Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [217]
Prohibition itself ran counter to very deep cultural patterns. Millions of people saw nothing wrong with a drink or two—or three or four, for that matter. Others drank but voted dry. Again, it is not exactly right to call this hypocrisy. There was, no doubt, plenty of hypocrisy; but there was also an honest belief in what we have called the Victorian compromise, here displaced onto the liquor problem. This was, in essence, a theory of social control; it was an attempt by some people to find a balance between legitimation (which would lead to too much vice) and prohibition (which was bound to fall flat on its face). The compromise had broken down after 1870, when the moral side pressed for unconditional surrender. The compromise broke down even more rapidly later in the twentieth century, when permissiveness went on the offensive; and the repeal of Prohibition, in utter disgrace, was the first great victory in the next phase of this war.
The Great Counterattack: Lifestyle Wars
The second half of the twentieth century, roughly speaking, was the period of the great counterattack. Very notably, much of the criminal fabric of the sex laws rotted away. Some aspects of vice laws remained almost intact—prostitution was and is still against the law, although much of the fervor has gone out of enforcement. The picture is mixed; and complicated. The motivating forces are various. But the general line of development seems perfectly plain.
With gambling, for example, there has been a definite turn of the wheel—though not everywhere. Decriminalization began in Nevada, the “great rotten borough.”74 Nevada had actually once outlawed gambling, in 1909.75 The law was liberalized, then tightened; loosened again; finally, in 1931, the state made gambling legal, partly as a way to make jobs and bring money into Nevada.76 Like every other state, Nevada was suffering from the Depression. Nothing much grows in Nevada, and it is hardly the place to build a factory. Instead, the state decided to make a living by legalizing what was illegal next door, in California. Gambling was the most obvious example.
It proved to be an excellent decision—for Nevada. In the forties, the gambling business boomed; and in 1945, the state reformed the licensing system, which had been strictly local, and gave authority over gambling to the State Tax Commission. Gambling became the big industry of Nevada, the keystone of its economy. By the fifties, an “incredible abundance of suckers” poured through “Nevada’s gigantic cream separators twenty-four hours a day.”77 Las Vegas became the capital city of casino gambling,78 perhaps the capital of American vulgarity as well. Like Sodom and Gomorrah, it was a desert city, but an angry God never swept it away. On the contrary, its economic power led to imitation, the most sincere form of flattery, in Atlantic City. Moreover, state after state, in the seventies and eighties, tried to make hay out of gambling, usually in the form of a state lottery. The voices of respectability protested; but they seemed to be talking to the wind.
Out of the Closet: Deregulating Sex
More dramatic, and much more significant, was the movement to deregulate the varieties of sex. The period after 1945 was a period of rapid social change, which meant, inevitably, rapid legal change as well. Most of the change was in one direction: away from prudery, repression, and the Victorian compromise. Some states wiped off the books all laws against any form of sexual behavior, so long as it was between those two (or more) randy partners, consenting adults.
The change did not come overnight. Obviously, adultery, fornication, sodomy, and the like, were