Who can believe it?

In his book Hollywood History of the World, novelist George MacDonald Fraser muses at a couple of points on the possibility that accurate history doesn’t always look credible when presented as fiction. For example, one critic, confronted with Sean Connery’s Scots accent in the Western film Shalako, scoffed that Connery made the whole movie unbelievable——are we supposed to believe there were Scottish people in the Old West? (In case you missed the point, yes, there were).
Likewise, John Dickson Carr, in the author’s notes to his historical fantasy mystery, Fire, Burn, quotes a female diarist in the 1820s tossing off the phrase “tell it to the Marines” and wonders if anyone would believe a woman of that era saying that in a novel.
Which brings me to SEXUAL REVOLUTION IN EARLY AMERICA, a fascinating book by Richard Godbeer about the sex life of the American colonies from the 1600s through the late 1700s.
Godbeer brings to life a world where the rules were far from settled: Church and secular authorities demanded formal marriages, for instance, but countless citizens considered themselves entitled to marry (or divorce) without anyone giving them official permission. Rules against premarital sex clashed with popular belief that once you were engaged, it was perfectly legitimate. Sexual double standards proliferated, divided along lines of gender, class and race.
And then there’s the Puritans.
Godbeer shows that while Puritans were as hard on extramarital sexual activity as legend has it, they believed very strongly in a healthy, fun sexual relationship within marriage; one preacher dismissed Catholic reverence for chastity as the sort of thing Antichrist would say. Not just for procreation, either; one woman well past childbearing age won a divorce on the grounds that her husband wasn’t doing his duty.
If I wrote a story with that as the setting, would anyone believe it? Or some of the outrageous accounts of non-Puritans willfully flouting the church’s strictures on good behavior with public displays of private parts or sexual behavior? Or all the bestiality the farmboys seem to have participated in?
And then there’s the Jesus As Sexy Bridegroom imagery. Puritans believed gender was a function of the body, not the soul, so even men with no same-sex urges (“going after strange flesh” as it was termed) had no problems writing about how they longed for Jesus to lubricate their soul and make it swell and grow strong …
If I stuck that into a story, I can’t imagine any reaction but hysterical giggles.
I’m sure some writer could take a line that and work wonders. But whoever she is, she’s way better than me.