If you thought Jeb Bush's socially conservative bent was confined to gay issues—where he's
proving not to be the moderate he was billed as—think again. Laura Bassett has
a retrospective on some radical ideas from his 1995 book
Profiles in Character, which helped inform his lawmaking as governor.
In a chapter called "The Restoration of Shame,” the likely 2016 presidential candidate made the case that restoring the art of public humiliation could help prevent pregnancies “out of wedlock.”
"One of the reasons more young women are giving birth out of wedlock and more young men are walking away from their paternal obligations is that there is no longer a stigma attached to this behavior, no reason to feel shame. Many of these young women and young men look around and see their friends engaged in the same irresponsible conduct. Their parents and neighbors have become ineffective at attaching some sense of ridicule to this behavior. There was a time when neighbors and communities would frown on out of wedlock births and when public condemnation was enough of a stimulus for one to be careful."
Bush points to Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter, in which the main character is forced to wear a large red "A" for "adulterer" on her clothes to punish her for having an extramarital affair that produced a child, as an early model for his worldview. "Infamous shotgun weddings and Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter are reminders that public condemnation of irresponsible sexual behavior has strong historical roots,” Bush wrote.
Wow, that's not even a longing for the good ol' days of the 1950s; it's solidly medieval. Why not just burn 'em at the stake?
Bassett notes that Bush's extreme ideas weren't simply a exercise in wishful thinking. After he became governor, Florida lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a law in 2001 that forced unwed mothers who wanted to put their child up for adoption but didn't know the identity of the father to repeatedly publish their personal description along with a history of their sexual encounters and possible dates of conception in a local newspaper. It became known as the "Scarlet Letter" law and it was repealed in 2003 after state courts ruled it unconstitutional.
Seems there was no similar effort to publicly shame men. Just the single mothers.