From Harold Frederic's The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896):


"Oh, now that's where you make your mistake," Sister Soulsby put in placidly. "These people of yours are not a whit worse than other people. They've got their good streaks and their bad streaks, just like the rest of us. Take them by and large, they're quite on a par with other folks the whole country through."

"I don't believe there's another congregation in the Conference where--where this sort of thing would have been needed, or, I might say, tolerated," insisted Theron.

"Perhaps you're right," the other assented; "but that only shows that your people here are different from the others--not that they're worse. . . . But you see what I mean. . . . To them the profession of entire sanctification is truly a genuine thing. Well, don't you see, when people just know that they're saved, it doesn't seem to them to matter so much what they do. They feel that ordinary rules may well be bent and twisted in the interest of people so supernaturally good as they are. That's pure human nature. It's always been like that."

From "Many Who Voted for 'Values' Still Like Their Television Sin" New York Times, 23 November 2004:

The divide between what people accept as proper in public and what they choose to enjoy in their private lives is, unsurprisingly, nothing new in the history of the world or this country.

"When the Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock left behind writing, it was William Bradford's, and you can clearly see what they believed in and what their values were," said Robert Thompson, professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University, referring to the colony's first governor. "Then you look at the court records and you see all kinds of fornication, adultery and bestiality."

Herbert J. Gans, professor of sociology at Columbia University and the author of "Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste," said, "For some people it's a case of 'I am moral therefore I can watch the most immoral show.' ''