By Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.” Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
The year 1648 saw the publication of Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts, a compilation of laws enacted by the colony’s General Court. The preface reminds us that “there is no humane law that tendeth to common good . . . but the same is mediately a law of God.” The list of capital offenses included adultery, idolatry, blasphemy, sodomy and witchcraft, with appropriate references to Leviticus, Deuteronomy and other books of the Bible.
And while the Puritan colonists were committed to their religious freedom, they firmly rejected the idea of freedom of religion, with its implication of doctrinal indifferentism. Banishment was the prescibed penalty for heresy, as carefully defined. Anabaptists and others opposed to infant baptism were likewise subject to banishment. A special section prohibited “those of the Jesuiticall Order” and ecclesiastics “ordained by the authoritie of the Pope” from even stepping foot in the colony, with death the penalty for repeat offenders. (In perhaps the earliest recorded example of compassionate conservatism, however, Jesuits who washed ashore through “ship-wrack or other accident” were permitted to remain until the departure of the next available ship.)
Yet despite the strongly theocratic foundation of their laws, the Puritans reserved to civil authority the solemnization of the most important relationship: marriage. Continue reading “Marital Discord” →
The lawyers for juice maker Pom Wonderful appear to have found a way to make lemonade from a lemon. After the company was hit by a largely negative ruling by Administrative Judge D. Michael Chappell over false advertising of the health benefits of his product, the company used lines from the opinion as part of its new advertising. Many have complained that the selective quotation is misleading. Whatever the accuracy, it is a move that will not go over well with Chappell or other judges. 
