Key Points:

1. "The sexual revolution theat Puritan architects had in mind was acheived only in part as the invocation of religious ideals clashed with the limitations of popular support and the practical challenges of sexual regulation." This was complicated by a trend to eroticize spiritual practices.
2. Attempts to make white women the repository of racial purity distracted attention from interracial unions involving white male planters.
3. The revolutionary rhetoric of independence offered both a language to justify sexual independence, as well as an ideology that placed moral virtue at the center of republican institutions.