Problems of Proof

[tirinian]

Quick, where were you on March 12, 1991? Can you account for your whereabouts the whole day? If someone said you were lying, how would you prove them wrong?

That's why we have statutes of limitations. Because we think it is fundamentally unfair to make someone defend themself against accusations of things long enough ago that it's effectively impossible to actually mount a defense. Remember that, when people start talking about how they "tie the hands of prosecutors" or "protect criminals." They protect people from having to defend themselves from ancient accusations. This country's not supposed to believe that accusations make someone a criminal.

I'll be seriously annoyed if the Legislature caves on this one.

-----------

On another topic entirely, a scenario.

New guy shows up in town. Goes to a store to buy a bed and some bedclothes, but doesn't have money for them, so asks if he can buy them on credit. Store owner guy says "no can do on the loan, but I tell you what, I've got a double bed, you can sleep with me tonight." The men continue to share a bed for four years, while writing journal entries and letters and stuff about their deep and abiding affection for each other and the life-long bond they have formed. Is that enough to convince you they're (probably) doing more than just sleeping?

Does it make a difference if New Guy had previously been interested in a young woman who died, and that he later goes on to get married?

Does it make a difference if this is happening in the 1830's?

Does it make a difference if the New Guy is Abraham Lincoln?

The history of Lincoln I'm reading currently more or less sets out these facts, and says "well, that's really not enough, and we don't really know if they were having sex," with a clear implication that we should assume they weren't. She justifies this by claiming that it wasn't such terribly uncommon behavior in that era, but that just invites the response "so maybe lots of guys were having sex with each other," and leaves me wondering what could possibly convince her. Not even about Lincoln, necessarily, just in general for some random guy from the period. Or does she believe that guy-on-guy sex just disappeared and no one did it between the Greeks and Oscar Wilde?

Comments

[csbermack.livejournal.com]

Well, it matters a lot that it was the 1830s, because beds were really expensive then. I'm under the impression that it was routine for non-lovers to share beds; families, travellers, etc. Not that that's an educated impression.

I would have to know a lot more about sexual mores of the time to have an idea if that would necessarily mean that they were fucking. I would, however, say that they would probably be in a deep love relationship, but there's no reason for a deep love relationship to necessarily include the dipping of non-candle wicks.

The sexual meaning of different activities cannot be divorced from culture and time; in some cultures, it is presumed that if a man and a woman spend the night under the same roof, they have had sex.

Certainly there was man-on-man sex throughout history. People haven't changed that much. But that doesn't tell us very much about someone like Lincoln; we need to know more. What did it mean, then, for a man to fuck another man? What did it mean to have a deep abiding affection for another man? Nowadays, it means things about the gay identity, but that's a recent phenomenon.

So what would it mean if Lincoln had been fucking his friend? It wouldn't make him gay; it wouldn't change his politics, policies, or actions. It probably wouldn't have informed his political choices much either. What would the fact of sex teach us that the fact of love does not?

[tirinian.livejournal.com]

Really, I'm less interested in the question whether Lincoln and the shop guy were having sex, than with the obliteration of male-to-male sex from history embedded in the assumption that they weren't. I don't know enough about the 1830's to know what this proves, or doesn't prove. I know enough about what's likely to survive from that era to know that if this doesn't prove it to her satisfaction, though, there's not likely to be anything that'll prove to her satisfaction that anyone from that era was having male-to-male sex. (Except occasional criminal records, presumably, and I suspect even they are sparse.)

It's the bind of "well, someone might have been doing it somewhere, but you can't prove it about anyone in particular, so we're going to pretend no one was" that I'm uncomfortable with.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

But isn't being unable to prove that any particular male couple was having sex in the 1830s much like my being unable to prove where I was on March 12, 1991? As things recede farther into the past, they become harder to prove.

It's the step between the specific and the general that breaks down - I probably couldn't prove where I was any time in 1991. But that doesn't mean I wasn't ever anywhere. It may not be possible to prove any given set of people was having sex (except for the ones that had children), but that doesn't mean nobody was.

[tirinian.livejournal.com]

Even the ones who had children, it's probably hard to really *prove* who the father was, at this distance. :-)

But yes, the problem I'm having is, if the answer to "what does it take to prove this to your satisfaction?" is "more than can plausibly exist at this late date," then you wind up never teaching that it was true of anyone. Even if you admit theoretically it was probably true of someone, you wind up teaching a "straight-washed" history.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

This seems true of most sex; an affair has to be seriously documented (like producing offspring) before it's accepted as fact. So gay relationships end up particularly invisible because there are no children, and no legal marriages to produce a paper trail.

I read an article recently about C.S. Lewis talking about his relationship with his friend's mother which seemed to use much the same dodginess. He spent the night there a lot. Were they having sex? Um. Well. Maybe. There isn't any proof at this point, though.

I don't think the correct answer is to lower the standard of proof for saying "Yes, we know this is true." But lowering the bar for saying "Yes, this might have been true, we can't be sure" seems reasonable. And if I poke around either Lincoln's biography or Lewis's biography, there's a bit there about "was this a sexual relationship? historians disagree" - and it's mentioned in the book you're reading, even if the author disagrees with Tripp - so the idea hasn't become completely erased again.

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

Have you read anywhere anyone saying that male-male sex actually stopped happening for several hundred years? No, because no one said that.

Clearly the deep mutual affection hasn't been erased from history, right? So it's just the physical act that's missing? Well, how much male-female copulation shows up in history books? Not much, and when it does show up it's mostly when some instance of adultery produced a child. If male-male sex produced children, it'd probably show up in the history books a little more, but as it is, it's like a lot of stuff people do that doesn't show up in history books. Do you think people stopped farting during the Renaisaance, just because none of the books about the Renaissance you've read mention anyone's flatulence?

[tirinian.livejournal.com]

But they are, effectively, saying that. "Sure, all these guys shared beds together, and wrote about how much they cared about each other, but they weren't in *love*, in the romantic sense, don't you know. Nor having sex or anything." "How do you know they weren't having in love/having sex?" "Well, because men didn't do that then."

You can say this isn't evidence one way or the other if you like. But when you say "because this isn't evidence, they didn't", you're effectively making the claim that no one did.

I also have to think that these arrangements were not so common to be *no* evidence, or someone would be pointing out how all the other presidents/senators/whatever from that era had similar experiences at some point. Goodwin points out a few people with similar experiences, although not enough to get above the 10% of the population Kinsey talks about (a number with it's own problems, but whatever), but it's again with a "and we know these people couldn't really have meant it that way" presumption that doesn't seem to be founded in anything other than "people didn't do that."

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

Goodwin points out a few people with similar experiences, although not enough to get above the 10% of the population Kinsey talks about

Well, surely you don't expect someone to be able to cite the sleeping arrangements of >10% of the population of the 1830s, case by case?

And yes, "this isn't evidence -> therefore it didn't happen" is unsupported. But, you know, treiza just recently wrote a very sweet post about her trip with a bunch of people she loved very much and had a lifelong bond with. So I don't think that it always has to be all about sexual relationships, either.

[tirinian.livejournal.com]

No, of course it isn't always. And like I said, I don't actually care much about whether it was for Lincoln or not. But I do care that if your response to someone's offer of proof "well, this doesn't prove it," in such a way that it's clear there's no plausible offer of proof that would prove it, to your mind, that you follow that up with "so we don't know" rather than "so you're wrong." If it's an untestable hypothesis, then it's untestable.

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm sure Goodwin didn't say, "Even if you gave me a dozen authentic letters from both Lincoln and Joe Smith describing their sexual relations in detail, I wouldn't believe it." What would constitute a plausible offer of proof that would be available from ancient Greece but unobtainable from the 19th century?

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

So, apparently when Time Magazine did an article on Lincoln a year ago, the author (who was somewhat rebutting Tripp) cited explicitly sexual correspondence between other bed-sharers that is considered proof of sexual relationships there. So it's not that there's no proofs that would be considered plausible, just that those proofs (which certainly arguably don't exist at this time for a large number of the relationships that did exist) aren't there in this case.

[treptoplax.livejournal.com]

I see the problem, but thin evidence is still thin.

You can say this isn't evidence one way or the other if you like. But when you say "because this isn't evidence, they didn't", you're effectively making the claim that no one did.

If I believe that rolling 2d6 and getting a 6 on the first die means I probably didn't roll a 12, do I believe that it's impossible to roll 12 on 2d6?

If I approve of statues of limitations, do I believe that nobody committed any crimes before 1991?

There's a difference between "No one did" and "We can't say who did".

[kirisutogomen.livejournal.com]

Well, I haven't read Goodwin's book, nor am I likely to, so I have to take your characterization of this bit. However, my alarm bells go off when you say "a clear implication that we should assume they weren't." If she doesn't actually say that we should assume they weren't having sex, is it possible that you're misconstruing her argument for uncertainty as an argument for improbability?

If someone said, "because this isn't evidence, they didn't," then I'd be with you that it's an unjustified inference. What I'm curious about is the extent to which Goodwin or any other historians are actually making that inference.

[twe.livejournal.com]

Which history of Lincoln, out of curiousity?

[tirinian.livejournal.com]

Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. harrock gave it to me for Christmas.

[twe.livejournal.com]

Hee. I got that for treptoplax for Christmas, though it was tempting to keep it for myself.

[treptoplax.livejournal.com]

The main thing I've learned from that book so far is that the early 1800s sucked. I mean, the whole debate about was Lincoln depressive or just melancholy... personally, I think he was just bummed out because people he cared for dropped dead more often than any person up until Jessica Fletcher. (His mom, his big sister, his fiancee, his son...) Most of the other presidential candidates of 1860 didn't do too much better, either...

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

Like cshiley, the 1830's matters to me too (far more so than the relations with women or who New Guy's name is). Not because I assume there were no gay men in the 1830s, but because

1) I remember bed-sharing from things like Little House on the Prarie - now, granted, that was more about stuffing a pile of kids or teenagers in one bed, but it just feels more common then.

2) I think men used to be a lot more willing to talk about their deep and abiding love for each other in a non-romantic way, in journals and letters. Possibly just because they wrote better journals and letters then.

Dunno. Were it current day, I'd be solidly "yes". For the 1830s, I'm more waffly. But most of my impression of that time is from fiction rather than history, so I may just be misinformed. :-\

[treptoplax.livejournal.com]

1) Heck, I'm quite sure that my grandparents had more children than beds in the 1940's. (And had to walk two miles to school, uphill both ways, in the snow, after their house burned down each day...)

2) This is interesting. I wonder if it's because heterosexual relationships with women often didn't have that component (because they weren't equals?), or if something else has tweaked in male archetypes since then...


I'm actually pretty dubious; if it had all happened after he'd been in town a week I might lean to that explanation, but going to bed with a random shopkeeper you just met strikes me as a little unlikely. (Now, you could say the relationship evolved, but then you have to admit it didn't start that way, and what do you have left to support the supposition?)

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

'Cause nobody ever goes to bed with people they just met? I'm sure we ought to be able to find *some* historical support for the pickup if we look hard enough. :)

[treptoplax.livejournal.com]

I think you have a doctoral thesis for a historian, there, or maybe a new nonfiction bestseller (_The Hookup through History_).

(shrug) It just seems to me to add significant complications without explaining anything that wasn't plausible to begin with. Of course, given what I know about cultural details of the 1830's frontier, my intuition may not be worth much.

[csbermack.livejournal.com]

I just hit a news story about the statute of limitations.

We've got things with no statutes of limitations, like murder. What else?

Those are for heinous crimes that people shouldn't be allowed to get away with just because they happened thirty years ago. But there's nothing stopping them from accusing me of murdering some random fucker on March 12, 1991.

Do you oppose those missing statutes of limitations as well? Do you think that sexual abuse of a minor is not severe enough to be on par with those other crimes? Is there something else different about it?

[tirinian.livejournal.com]

Murder's the only one I know of, and yeah, I'd mostly like to see that be twenty years or something. But at least in murder, you're very unlikely to make that stick without a body, which is at least some level of physical evidence. There's not likely to be any physical evidence of sexual abuse at all after ten years, let alone twenty.

How long the statute is varies on the badness of the crime, and I don't actually have very strong opinions on whether a particular crime should be a three year statute or a six year statute, but "forever" is just too long for me. I have no problem with the statute tolling (not starting to run) until you're an adult (which it already does).

I also don't believe for a second that this will do anything useful to "protect the children" - it will only serve to punish the fucker, which, while an admirable goal, is not something I'm willing to run nearly as large risks of beating on innocent people for. Anyone who thinks a child molester gives any thought at all to "hah-ha, if I can just keep this kid quiet for fifteen years after they turn eighteen so the statute expires, I'm set!" before doing whatever bad thing they're going to do is an idiot.

There is potentially some protective value in a victim coming forward 20 years later and saying "that fucker molested me, check to see if he's doing it to anyone now," but that benefit doesn't require the statute to be lifted. Whether or not that fucker can be charged the victim is still perfectly capable of coming forward and saying "check him out, he's a bad guy!" Although really, even there, the whole "child molesters are huge repeat offenders" thing is more of a myth than not. Most of your run-of-the-mill crooks are as likely to repeat their crime as child molesters are.

meaningful in practice

[treptoplax.livejournal.com]

Is this anything other than showboating? It seems to me that it ought to be next-to-impossible to get a conviction on a 20-year-old molestation charge.

I could be wrong, of course... when I did jury duty, the big surprise to me was how much faith the other jurors had in their personal impressions of how trustworthy witnesses were. I mean, I was "He could be fudging, she could be, both might be... what was the timeline and physical evidence again?", but plenty of folks were "He was definitely a little shifty."

March 12, 1991

[mjperson.livejournal.com]

Well, having gone through my records, I can account for my whereabouts from 2-4PM, and from 6-7:30 PM, with documentation supporting it. Sadly, the rest of the day I'm pretty much screwed in the alibi department. Unless someone remembers something...

Re: March 12, 1991

[twe.livejournal.com]

Off the top of my head that would be spring semester of my junior year. Patriot's day weekend would have been the next weekend, since that's closer to the 19th, so there should have been classes. It's a Tuesday, so no junior lab or LSC meeting, but quite possibly 8.06. If it was a year earlier, I totally say you and I and jcatelli were sitting in the APO office during 8.04 eating lunch. Shadows ran in February, because packet handout was on Valentine's day, so that was long over. If anything particularly memorable happened that day, the memory is not strongly attached to the date, but like you, I could probably recreate some of my whereabouts had I access to my records as I write this. :)

Re: March 12, 1991

[ironrat.livejournal.com]

If it was a Tuesday and otherwise not a holiday, I would have been in school, in the third grade, with Mrs. Anderson, until about 3:30... After that, I will probably need to track down my best friend at the time Greg to get me an alibi, but I think he's in New Mexico or something strange like that.

[twe.livejournal.com]

New guy shows up in town. Goes to a store to buy a bed and some bedclothes, but doesn't have money for them, so asks if he can buy them on credit. Store owner guy says "no can do on the loan, but I tell you what, I've got a double bed, you can sleep with me tonight."

Actually, this part all sounded pretty weird to me, until you explain that is happned in the 1830s (and, presumably, somewhere in the midwest) and not modern day America.

[dpolicar]

While not particularly disagreeing with you about statutes of limitations, I am somewhat bewildered by the idea of a legal construct intended to protect you from having to "prove your innocence" in particular contexts... I was under the naive impression that the legal constructs presupposed that you don't have to prove your innocence, ever.

[countertorque.livejournal.com]

I think tirinian's point is that if there is no statute of limitations some guy can say "dpolicar molested me on March 12, 1991" and provide a lot of details about the alleged incident. It is now incumbent upon you to make some counterclaim and provide enough details to sound credible. So, yeah, the burden is on the accuser. But, if the accuser has a detailed story and you've got "I have no idea; that was 15+ years ago!" you may be in trouble.

[greyautumnrain.livejournal.com]

The two topics seem to go together well. I can't prove where I was on the date in question. I was at MIT, and the best I could hope for is that there are records of me being logged into Athena and such.

Just as its hard for me to prove where I was 15 years ago, its hard for us to prove someone who is long dead was gay in an era when that was considered to be a crime. Hard, but not impossible. One case between the greeks and Oscar Wilde springs to mind: Richard the Lionhearted was almost certainly shagging his minstel friend, not to mention he spent ten years avoiding his wife.

I think the author in question is showing homophobic tendancies if she feels the need to say that Abe wasn't gay. Sure, lots of men expressed affection for each other back then and shared beds due to lack of bedspace. Does it make them gay? No. Does it make them not gay? No again. I think common sense says that some were and some weren't. Sadly, bigots tend not to respond well to what I consider to be common sense.

[twe.livejournal.com]

I think the author in question is showing homophobic tendancies if she feels the need to say that Abe wasn't gay.

Not at all. Charles says that Ms. Goodwin says there is insufficient evidence to say they were having sex, despite the obvious affection. Allison Weir says the same thing about Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley in one of her books on Elizabeth I.

[greyautumnrain.livejournal.com]

Hmm... maybe I read that too quickly. I suppose I was assuming that she was arguing that in a defensive tone. I was also assuming she was making a big deal out of it, which I would find suspicious.. As for Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley, I think the record seems overwhelming that the feelings in that one were not platonic, whether or not they ever actually consumated the relationship. The thing is, in the case of Abe, it seems to me that the nature of his relationship with this guy is not terribly relevant, but then I don't know the details. The Elizabeth/Dudley relationship has a bit more historical relevance. Since Elizabeth was a hereditary monarch who never produced an heir her sex life is more of an issue than that of an elected head of state, especially since the Dudley stuff overlapped the time she was on the throne.

[twe.livejournal.com]

Weir is definitely of the opinion that Elizabeth was in love with Dudley, and thinks there was no way they could have gotten away with a sexual relationship in secret.