History Main / EternalSexualFreedom

* ''Film/WestSideStory2021'' downplays this, as it's set in TheFifties, but women like Anita display very 21st-century attitudes towards sex. Her verse in the quintet version of "Tonight", about how much she can't wait for Bernardo to ravish her, is sung while she's literally in Mass, and the other women merely shush her as though she's casually annoying. She and Bernardo have very loud sex after the social, which the 18-year-old María doesn't bat an eyelid at, and María herself sleeps with Tony later. Granted it's in the heat of the moment [[spoiler: after he plans to leave town to escape the law]] but still.

* ''Literature/SallyLockhart'': ''The Shadow in the North'' provides a relatively justified example - Sally's friends seem perfectly thrilled she's gotten pregnant outside marriage, [[spoiler:after all, the baby is [[SomeoneToRememberHimBy Frederick's]]]], and don't even seem to worry that this might be difficult for her. Given that she's a London woman with a career during TheGayNineties, and whose friends tend towards the bohemian, this is fairly believable. Notably in the next book, ''The Tiger in the Well'', this turns into a huge problem for her when a fake husband turns up and hardly anybody is willing to believe Sally's side of the story.

* ''Series/{{MASH}}'' plays with this trope in several different ways, depending on the character and the writer(s) of the episode. For the married Henry Blake and Trapper John, and early-season bachelor Hawkeye Pierce, EternalSexualFreedom is in full play; no one calls them out on their open and casual affairs. The married Frank Burns, on the other hand, is treated like scum for establishing an ongoing, if shallow, relationship with Margaret Houlihan, who gets the nickname "Hot Lips" out of it, although in their case this is more because they're {{Holier Than Thou}} {{hypocrite}}s.[[note]]Also an example of {{Values Dissonance}} - according to {{The Seventies}} views on morality, Hawkeye and Trapper are honest and open about their sexual life and thus the "good ones", while Frank Burns and Margaret Houlihan are not, and thus are the "bad ones".[[/note]] B.J. Hunnicutt, on the ''two'' occasions that he isn't completely faithful to his wife Peg, doesn't get a lot of judgment from the other characters; mostly, he pillories himself, though Hawkeye reacts angrily to his writing a letter confessing to Peg, saying it will only hurt her. Also, in later seasons Hawkeye's womanizing is ([[DependingOnTheWriter some times]]) deconstructed and he's shown as rather pathetic rather than as a positive example.

** Emily Grace backs down from her wedding days before to hang with George Crabtree. Bonus points for this being set in [[TheGayNineties the liberal 1890's]].

* ''VideoGame/ChoiceOfGames'': In ''Hollywood Visionary'', if your character engages in homosexual relationships, the ''only'' one who will take any note of it at all is [[MediaWatchdog Jonathan Creed]]. This game is set in TheFifties at the height of the RedScare, and Creed asks about your homosexual activities at a Congressional hearing -- none of the other members of Congress take your sex life into account in any way. Nobody from Hollywood cares, of course, but -- as you're not part of a big studio -- this is TruthInTelevision.

* ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'':
** Averted in the episode "[[Recap/TorchwoodS1E10OutOfTime Out Of Time]]" -- the temporally-displaced characters from 1953 have to be told about modern sexual mores, and each reacts differently.
** On the other hand, in the episode "[[Recap/TorchwoodS1E12CaptainJackHarkness Captain Jack Harkness]]", Jack dances with and kisses another man in public -- in 1941 England without anyone raising any objections. [[spoiler:Strongly implied to be a subversion. Jack mentions that the real captain Jack Harkness dies the next day in a routine training exercise that ran into German Messerschmitts. At one point halfway through the episode, the two of them sneak out to have a private moment and hold hands for a few seconds when they're interrupted by a couple seeking some privacy, Jack hastily making up an excuse about discussing strategies to justify why they were alone in the "lovers' corner". Finally, at the end of the episode, the two of them start dancing together, with the others on the dancefloor stopping to stare at them in shock. They share a kiss on the dancefloor as a rift in space and time opens next to them, going entirely unnoticed as everyone is staring at the two kissing men instead. The overall implication is that the captain's death the next day may have been a cover-up by his squadron, though it's never outright confirmed either way.]]

** Averted in the episode "[[Recap/TorchwoodS1E10OutOfTime Out Of Time]]" -- the temporally-displaced characters have to be told about modern sexual mores, and each reacts differently.

* The opening area of part one of ''VideoGame/BioshockInfinite: Burial at Sea'', which is set in [[Videogame/{{Bioshock}} Rapture]] in 1959, features a same-sex couple in a public area. Likely justified as an effort to show that Rapture was founded on objectivist libertarian ideology while also contrasting [[VideoGame/BioshockInfinite Columbia's]] hardcore religious conservatism.

* In ''[[Creator/ChoiceOfGames Hollywood Visionary]]'', if your character engages in homosexual relationships, the ''only'' one who will take any note of it at all is [[MediaWatchdog Jonathan Creed]]. This game is set in TheFifties at the height of the RedScare, and Creed asks about your homosexual activities at a Congressional hearing - none of the other members of Congress take your sex life into account in any way. Nobody from Hollywood cares, of course, but - as you're not part of a big studio - this is TruthInTelevision.

* JustifiedTrope in ''Literature/TheCrocodileGod.'' Filipino-American Mirasol has dreams about [[{{Reincarnation}} her past lives]] and [[ReincarnationRomance her relationship(s) with the Tagalog sea-god Haik.]] In the newly-colonized Philippines, past-Mirasol is a housemaid to a Spanish family, and she marries Haik with a loose ceremony and no witnesses ([[UrbanFantasy unless you count the whales).]] Haik asks if she wants to get married, but not because he himself is bothered--it's because he doesn't want her master [[DeliberateValuesDissonance to "check" her virginity.]] She assures Haik that [[BeneathNotice the family won't notice anything as long as she doesn't get pregnant,]] and while the Spaniard's wife worries about Mirasol having sex before marriage, Mirasol just shrugs and [[MundaneSolution takes medicinal tea for contraception.]] In real-life, precolonial Filipinos were indeed less uptight before Spain arrived, and medieval Catholicism would have been ESPECIALLY strict. The REAL issue with marrying Haik is cultural due to how obviously ''indio'' he is--two years into the marriage, Mirasol's master pulls a gun on him the moment he spots Haik's [[TattooAsCharacterType extensive, extremely non-Catholic tattoos.]]

* JustifiedTrope in ''Literature/TheCrocodileGod.'' Filipino-American Mirasol has dreams about [[{{Reincarnation}} her past lives]] and [[ReincarnationRomance her relationship(s) with the Tagalog sea-god Haik.]] In the newly-colonized Philippines, past-Mirasol is a housemaid to a Spanish family, and she marries Haik with a loose ceremony and no witnesses ([[UrbanFantasy unless you count the whales).]] Haik asks if she wants to get married, but not because he himself is bothered--it's because he doesn't want her master [[DeliberateValuesDissonance to "check" her virginity.]] She assures Haik that [[BeneathNotice the family won't notice anything as long as she doesn't get pregnant,]] and while the Spaniard's wife worries about Mirasol having sex before marriage, Mirasol just shrugs and [[MundaneSolution takes medicinal tea for contraception.]] In real-life, precolonial Filipinos were indeed less uptight before Spain arrived, and medieval Catholicism would have been ESPECIALLY strict. The REAL issue with marrying Haik is cultural due to how obviously ''indio'' he is--two years into the marriage, [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome Mirasol's master pulls a gun on him]] the moment he spots Haik's [[TattooAsCharacterType extensive, extremely non-Catholic tattoos.]]

* ''Literature/SallyLockhart'': ''The Shadow in the North'' provides a relatively justified example - Sally's friends seem perfectly thrilled she's gotten pregnant outside marriage, [[spoiler:after all, the baby is [[SomeoneToRememberHimBy Frederick's]]]], and don't even seem to worry that this might be difficult for her. Given that she's a London woman with a career during TheGayNineties, and whose friends tend towards the bohemian, this is fairly believable. Notably in the next book, ''The Tiger in the Well'', this [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome turns into a huge problem for her when a fake husband turns up]] and hardly anybody is willing to believe Sally's side of the story.

Times change, and so do sexual mores, but you wouldn't know that from most modern historical fiction. While it is certainly true that people have had premarital sex, extramarital sex, sex without the end-goal of baby-making, and gay sex since the beginning of time, doing so (or at least getting caught) was, in many time periods, a Very Bad Thing. However, some writers of period fiction do not seem to realize this and thus their characters behave as though contemporary sexual mores (or even looser ones) exist in their historic worlds.

This is not to say that sex shouldn't happen in period fiction; on the contrary, sex happened ''a lot''. Promiscuity is very, very well recorded through the ages. It was the attitudes about sex and its results that differed. For example, there is nothing historically inaccurate about a story set in Topeka in the 1930s about a married man having an affair. If, however, the mistress has his child, the child is acknowledged openly as his son, and everybody is perfectly fine with it, then the story would fall right into this trope. And, of course, if you throw race, ethnicity, social class (''especially'' in non-democratic or only quasi-democratic societies), or something as politically charged as communism into the mix, the problem becomes even more acute. (It can be justified, however, if the story takes place in a bohemian setting or miles from civilization, or if all the characters are criminals or rogues ''not'' of the FamilyValuesVillain variety.) Having said that, societies without effective birth control (which was most of them) usually looked unkindly on irresponsible baby-making, especially among those too poor to feed the resulting children. Put another way, it is not so much ''what'' the characters do as ''how'' it is treated by the other characters.

Additionally, this may vary for social classes within the ''same'' culture; the virginity of women with BlueBlood was important not only because a noblewoman functioned as a living bargaining chip or political merger, but to distinguish them from the lower classes as [[VirginPower untouched and pure.]] (And very few people have thought to justify a sexually-free noblewoman by having her [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney pay people to shut up,]] or [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections have her family call her exploits "bad rumors."]]) The sex life of a farmer/townswoman would basically be BeneathNotice to those of high status, since nobody was counting on her to make royal babies or cement an alliance with troublesome rivals. Of course, while it often led to a more relaxed view of sex/virginity among commoners, it also had the harsh cultural side-effect of making nobles think [[ValuesDissonance "peasant women are easy sluts" or "anyone can screw a farmgirl, it's not like they're important anyway."]] (Also note that this would be frequently if not AlwaysFemale-- a man is [[UnexpectedVirgin not a virgin]] too long past puberty, after all.)

Inversion of this trope is not unknown, either: it's not impossible to find works which assume that every society anywhere in the world prior to the 1960s Western [[note]] and while many non-Western cultures pre-1965 had even stricter moral standards than the West, others did not, such as the Polynesian islands and the Inuit Arctic [[/note]] "sexual revolution" was as prudish and negative - or even completely ignorant - about sexuality as a caricature of late-nineteenth-century England or the 1950s USA. Some younger and particularly naïve viewers might think that even the ''1980s'' was a prudish time (which is understandable given the frequently [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] sociopolitical influence of the Moral Majority during that decade, but after all there were very good reasons for that group and others like it being up in arms, at least from their perspective).

* Subverted humorously in a Carl's Jr./Hardee's TV commercial in which a man in a suit, having apparently time-traveled from the antebellum South, shows up on a beach in the present day with a picnic basket full of Carl's/Hardee's new made-from-scratch biscuits. After sharing his biscuits with the shorts- and bikini-clad beachcombers, the first thing he wonders is why everyone is in their underwear. (Even more hilarious when you remember that underwear for both sexes in the Civil War era was more dowdy than any contemporary bathing suit, and that the only people in America at that time wearing anything resembling Speedos and bikinis were Native Americans; it's understandable that the time-traveler would assume ''something'' had gone awry.)

* In ''Anime/SamuraiChamploo'' it's actually [[LampshadedTrope Lampshaded]] in one episode by the narrator, reminding that Edo-period Japan had different sexual mores from the later Meiji-period, when the Western influences started to creep in. Calling it more "liberal", however, would be simplistic -- sure, homosexual relationships were tolerated and even valued. But rape was often used as a punishment or interrogation method on female criminals, pederasty was widespread and even encouraged, and the main reason homosexuality was accepted was misogyny. (Because why would you want to love a mere woman?)

* ''ComicBook/GoldieVance'' takes place in the early 60's. Despite this nobody says anything about Goldie's love interest being another girl.

* The opening to ''WesternAnimation/{{Lightyear}}'' confirms that it's the same in-universe movie that Andy from ''Franchise/ToyStory'' watched in 1995. It's unlikely that Creator/{{Disney}} would have made a movie featuring a lesbian couple in the nineties. They almost cut it in 2020s!

* ''Film/DarlingLili'' presents the titular Lili Smith as an entertainer with a wholesome EnglishRose persona, and a symbol of patriotism in World War I; performing cheerful, uplifting songs. When she makes her act HotterAndSexier to the point that she performs a striptease on stage and is naked very briefly (the lights go out as she bares all), the performance is just met with [[AllMenArePerverts giggles from the men in the audience]] and [[AllWomenArePrudes mild disapproval from the females]]. She also gets her identity as a spy for the Germans exposed, and yet the end shows her performing in front of an adoring crowd who applauds her reuniting with Bill. Realistically, she could have been ''executed'', as happened to UsefulNotes/MataHari (whom she's loosely inspired by) or would at least have faced public disgrace.
* ''Film/KingdomOfHeaven'' has the hero and the queen in a sexual relationship despite her being married to someone else, and no-one questions the morality of this, even though the movie takes place in Middle Ages Jerusalem. Under the specific circumstances -- the husband is politically and personally unpopular and the queen is the heir to the throne -- many people, specifically Sybilla's adherents and Balian's followers, would be willing to wink at the relationship. Of course those who sided with the husband would ''not''. While there is some indication the real Sybilla and Balian did indeed have an affair, it seems they were far more discreet about it.

* ''Film/TheLastDuel'' does this the other way round, applying 21st century attitudes about rape and consent to a story set in the 14th. While it gets the attitude that if Marguerite 'submitted' to Jacques then Pierre wouldn't consider it rape right, it applies very modern 'he said she said' sensibilities to the trial. In real life, Marguerite's family supported her and the court actually considered the fact that she was making the accusations in the first place as significant evidence that they were truthful, since a noblewoman would not make such accusations lightly and risk ruin and shame.

* The 1999 film version of ''Theatre/AMidsummerNightsDream'' updates the Shakespeare play from Ancient Greece to 19th century Tuscany, but seems to abandon this when the scene of Lysander and Hermia appealing to Theseus has the latter's party finding all four lovers lying naked in a field together. Egeus, who is Hermia's ''father'', doesn't even seem fazed at finding his daughter naked in public; having apparently just had sex with the man he forbade her to marry. The epilogue shows all the couples freely going to bed together, even though none of them are married yet.

* ''Film/ShakespeareInLove'': Viola suffers no negative consequences as a result of her affair, though going by the mores of the time her reputation would have been irretrievably ruined. In reality Lord Wessex most likely would have canceled their engagement. Plus, no one else would marry her due to the stigma. However, as he's desperate to get money, going through with it might not be wholly unrealistic (though he would want to insure she hadn't gotten pregnant by Shakespeare). On that note, there's no indication that she ever fears either pregnancy or [=STDs=], though the former would also cause her ruin and the latter could be deadly with syphilis then (it's theorized by some Shakespeare contracted it).
* ''Film/WestSideStory2021'' downplays this, as it's set in TheFifties, but women like Anita display very 21st century attitudes towards sex. Her verse in the quintet version of "Tonight", about how much she can't wait for Bernardo to ravish her, is sung while she's literally in Mass, and the other women merely shush her as though she's casually annoying. She and Bernardo have very loud sex after the social, which the 18-year-old María doesn't bat an eyelid at, and María herself sleeps with Tony later. Granted it's in the heat of the moment [[spoiler: after he plans to leave town to escape the law]] but still.

* Diana Gabaldon's ''Literature/{{Outlander}}'' series does a pretty good job of subverting this in a historically appropriate manner, even if the books do involve a good bit of time travel. In one of the later books, [[spoiler: Brianna Fraser (the heroine's 20th century daughter) loses her virginity to her 20th century boyfriend, and is raped shortly after by the book's 18th century BigBad. And gets pregnant, from one of the two. Guess which one she can tell her 18th century, very Scottish, very ''angry'' father about? When the news does come out that she wasn't a virgin, there's a screaming match that almost reads like a KickTheDog because she indulged her desire for sex. Extramarital sex, though her mother is concerned mostly by the lack of contraception, is BAD]]. And the heroic homosexual character "coming out" is {{Squick}} to the heroine, equivalent to him confessing to murdering puppies.

** Clare comes out as a lesbian at the end of Season 1. She faces only mild opposition from Erin, who overcomes these prejudices quickly, and the other characters start wearing rainbow bands at school in support of her. It's set in the early 90s in Derry, in a time when Ireland hadn't even legalized ''divorce'' yet (although Derry is part of Northern Ireland and subject to the UK's laws). Lisa Magee even admitted to using a RoseTintedNarrative for this bit.

** "Day of the Moon" has an inversion. Richard Nixon offers to assist Canton Delaware by working to overturn interracial marriage bans. ''Loving v. Virginia'', which did so in real life, was decided June 12, 1967, while "Day of the Moon" is obviously set on July 20, 1969. Nixon wasn't offering to make it ''legal'' for Canton to marry a black spouse, he was offering to ensure Canton didn't get hounded out his government job for doing so. [[spoiler:He backs down when he realizes that Canton was referring to a black ''male'' spouse however.]]

* ''Series/{{MASH}}'' plays with this trope several different ways, depending on the character and the writer(s) of the episode. For the married Henry Blake and Trapper John, and early-season bachelor Hawkeye Pierce, EternalSexualFreedom is in full play; no one calls them out on their open and casual affairs. The married Frank Burns, on the other hand, is treated like scum for establishing an ongoing, if shallow, relationship with Margaret Houlihan, who gets the nickname "Hot Lips" out of it, although in their case this is more because they're {{Holier Than Thou}} {{hypocrite}}s.[[note]]Also an example of {{Values Dissonance}} - according to {{The Seventies}} views on morality, Hawkeye and Trapper are honest and open about their sexual life and thus the "good ones", while Frank Burns and Margaret Houlihan are not, and thus are the "bad ones".[[/note]] B.J. Hunnicutt, on the ''two'' occasions that he isn't completely faithful to his wife Peg, doesn't get a lot of judgment from the other characters; mostly, he pillories himself, though Hawkeye reacts angrily to his writing a letter confessing to Peg, saying it will only hurt her. Also, in later seasons Hawkeye's womanizing is ([[DependingOnTheWriter some times]]) deconstructed and he's shown as rather pathetic rather than as a positive example.

* Averted somewhat with the second episode of ''Series/NewAmsterdam2008'', during a flashback set in the early 1940s, where John produces a baby out of wedlock with a black woman named Lily. She gets fired when her employer sees her with a white man and previously had to enter the hotel where they met through a service elevator. Her father becomes very upset with them both, and says they can never make it in the world (at this point interracial marriage was illegal in most states, for one[[note]]But never in New York.[[/note]]). The hotel staff react more reasonably than you would expect in real life in the 1940s, but they may not have known John and Lily were together (or it might not have been ''completely'' uncommon if a white man had an affair with a black woman). Lily herself breaks it off, knowing they'll be together in the long run. It turns out like this after she gets pregnant, and when they reunite in the black hospital after she has their baby, there are some very pointed looks.
* ''Series/{{Rome}}'' was ''filled'' with sex and violence, supposedly historically vetted. But while the show prides itself on well-researched use of DeliberateValuesDissonance, it also makes a few mistakes. For example, oral sex, referenced frequently with its Western connotations, was considered vulgar and disgusting by the otherwise-licentious Romans.[[note]][[BlueAndOrangeMorality To be more precise, it was a matter of perceived social dominance]] - ''receiving'' oral sex was quite OK, ''giving'' it was vilified. For anal sex it was the opposite.[[/note]]
* ''Series/SpartacusBloodAndSand'': While Romans did have lots and lots of sex, the show still plays this trope straight in regards to its use of female on female relationships; while it wasn't unheard of for slaves to perform lesbian sexual acts in secret for their mistress's entertainment, and possible for her to join in, lesbianism was not considered appropriate by general society (in most cases, it was simply disbelieved to exist however). Male same-sex relations were legal, but frequently mocked and often socially unacceptable to some degree. The main issue for Romans was who penetrated in anal sex, with the latter usually being of a lower social class, younger or a slave. If a man of higher standing ''received'' anal sex this was considered a huge disgrace and could result in a loss of social status ("infamy"). This was the primary distinction in Roman thought then on sexuality-"dominant" and "submissive", not the person's sex or gender. In fairness, though this doesn't come up all the consensual relationships between men which we see are by non-Romans/slaves who probably wouldn't care. The ''Lex Scantinia'' might have penalized sex with a freeborn minor male, or having receptive anal sex, though it's unclear (and was not enforced much if so, mostly in harassing opponents). Also a large sexual appetite, as the show has frequently, was condemned medically and ethically (of any kind), which cuts against much of the depiction (at least for Romans) though of course this doesn't mean it didn't happen.

* In ''Radio/RevoltingPeople'', nobody seems bothered that Elizabeth and Agnes are an open lesbian couple in the Revolutionary War era (except Sam, but that's just because Elizabeth's his ex-wife). This is {{handwaved}} by explaining that they're a ''very rich'' lesbian couple, and can buy a ''lot'' of nobody caring.

* ''VideoGame/FallenLondon'' takes place in the 1890s and lets you blithely engage in homosexuality, pre-marital sex, threesomes, etc. It even lets you have a same gender Constant Companion and nobody cares. Mind you, London has been dragged a mile underground by bats, [[DeathIsCheap people frequently don't stay dead]], and there are [[{{Cthulhumanoid}} Rubbery Men]], [[{{Golem}} Clay Men]] and devils walking the streets so maybe the population just has bigger things to worry about.

* While ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}'' is never directly stated to be any point in time, it is implied to be around the 1970s to 1990s, and ''VideoGame/Psychonauts2'' reveals that two of the founding members of the Psychonauts are a gay couple who married 20 years prior. This would not be socially acceptable on any level back during that time, especially given the fact that they're high ranking members of a government organization.
* In ''VideoGame/TheSimsMedieval'' no-one seems to object to premarital sex, promiscuity or same-sex relationships... in ''[[YeGoodeOldeDays the Middle Ages]]''.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Tropico}} 3'', you can legalize same-sex marriage... in the 1950s. Granted, the Cold War is [[AnachronismStew grafted on to an island with mostly 1980-2010 sensibilities anyway]]. Not to mention for the description of the edict, your adviser mistakenly uses the [[HaveAGayOldTime original definition of the word gay,]] prompting him to question the controversy of letting happy people get married.

* Justified in ''Literature/FreedomAndNecessity'' by Steven Brust and Emma Bull: Susan and Kitty's rather modern sexual mores are {{Hand Wave}}d away -- they're eccentric radical bohemians, and rather wealthy, so they are in a position to ignore "normal" 19th-century concerns about extra-marital sex, or being women living alone. Susan does comment that, having (chastely) sat up with a man overnight, her reputation would be gone if anyone knew about it.

* Played with in ''Manga/EmmaAVictorianRomance,'' what with the servant girls talking openly about their sexcapades and German immigrant Dorothea standing by a hotel window ''stark naked''. Then again, this could be a subversion of Victorian sexuality, given how hypocritical it actually was.

* Lampshaded in ''ComicBook/TheUltimates'' volume three; it's set in the 21st century and when the implied and mostly humorous BrotherSisterIncest between Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch was made explicit, Wasp chastised Captain America's "1940s brain" for being unable to comprehend it. And as one Website/{{Cracked}} [[http://www.cracked.com/article_16230_the-6-creepiest-comic-book-characters-all-time.html article]] put it: "we are quite sure incest existed back then, too." Not to mention, they were rather a bit more lenient back then on some of what we would call incest now. BrotherSisterIncest was as unacceptable then as it is now (and vice versa, since Wasp seems to be talking as if this is a weird forties hangup), but first cousins married sometimes. It's still legal in many places.

* For characters living in the 1980s, the characters in the ''Ranma 1/2'' oneshot ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13305459/1/Everything-s-Changing Everything's Changing]]'' are pretty accepting on queer issues. Akane's UsefulNotes/{{transgender}} feelings aren't given much note and neither is the relationship between Ranma and Akane. They even use terms like "[[UsefulNotes/{{Asexuality}} ace-spectrum]]", which didn't become commonplace until the 2010s.

* The 1995 version of ''Film/{{The Scarlet Letter|1995}}'' imposes this trope on the Puritans, of all people, by portraying the main characters as feeling guiltless over their adultery. [[https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-scarlet-letter-1995 Roger Ebert]] breaks down just how far afield from the source material the film goes.

* Subverted in ''Film/LawrenceOfArabia''. Set in the early 1900s, Lawrence is ashamed that he's a bastard (his father didn't marry his mother) and tries to conceal it, and his Arab friend is clearly initially uncomfortable with it.

* ''Film/{{Kinsey}}'' has a lot of fun playing with this one. It's 1947 and teaching human sexuality in public settings is forbidden, even at otherwise liberal state universities. In fact, Dr. Alfred Kinsey is a ''zoologist'' before beginning his infamous study. However, as Kinsey and his aides quickly discover, this hasn't prevented Americans of all varieties from "experimenting", and practitioners of masturbation, pedophilia, and [[BestialityIsDepraved worse]] soon come forward to tell them everything, some of them quite gleefully. This was a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_Reports#Criticism major source]] of the RealLife criticism of his reports, as many of the more prudish people in society would not take part with the interviews, whereas populations like male prostitutes and criminals were highly over-represented in his sample, leading many to question how representative his sample was of the population at large.
* The 1999 film version of ''Theatre/AMidsummerNightsDream'' updates the Shakespeare play from Ancient Greece to 19th century Tuscany, but seems to abandon this when the scene of Lysander and Hermia appealing to Theseus has the latter's party finding all four lovers lying naked in a field together. Egeus, who is Hermia's ''father'', doesn't even seem fazed at finding his daughter naked in public; having apparently just had sex with the man he forbade her to marry. The epilogue shows all the couples freely going to bed together, even though none of them are married yet.

* ''Literature/SallyLockhart'': ''The Shadow in the North'' provides a relatively justified example - Sally's friends seem perfectly thrilled she's gotten pregnant outside marriage, [[spoiler:after all, the baby is [[SomeoneToRememberHimBy Frederick's]]]], and don't even seem to worry that this might be difficult for her. Given that she's a London woman with a career during TheGayNineties, and whose friends tend towards the bohemian, this is fairly believable. Notably in the next book, ''The Tiger in the Well'', this [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome turns into a huge problem for her when a fake husband turns up]] and hardly anybody is willing to believe Sally's side of the story.
* Averted in Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/TimeEnoughForLove''. While main character Lazarus Long travels back to 1916 and has copious sex with his mother, and they seem to have no issues with what they are doing, they both put ''a lot'' of effort into making sure the relationship appears chaste and wholesome to anyone else. Additionally, she knows that she is already pregnant from her husband, so she does not have to worry about contraception. Of course, ParentalIncest was just as unacceptable when Heinlein was writing as it was in 1916.
* Diana Gabaldon's ''Literature/{{Outlander}}'' series does a pretty good job of subverting this in a historically appropriate manner, even if the books do involve a good bit of time travel. In one of the later books, [[spoiler: Brianna Fraser (the heroine's 20th century daughter) loses her virginity to her 20th century boyfriend, and is raped shortly after by the book's 18th century BigBad. And gets pregnant, from one of the two. Guess which one she can tell her 18th century, very Scottish, very ''angry'' father about? When the news does come out that she wasn't a virgin, there's a screaming match that almost reads like a KickTheDog because she indulged her desire for sex. Extramarital sex, though her mother is concerned mostly by the lack of contraception, is BAD]]. And the heroic homosexual character "coming out" is {{Squick}} to the heroine, equivalent to him confessing to murdering puppies.

* JustifiedTrope in ''Literature/TheCrocodileGod.'' Filipino-American Mirasol has dreams about [[{{Reincarnation}} her past lives]] and [[ReincarnationRomance her relationship(s) with the Tagalog sea-god Haik.]] In the newly-colonized Philippines, past-Mirasol is a housemaid to a Spanish family, and she marries Haik with a loose ceremony and no witnesses ([[UrbanFantasy unless you count the whales).]] Haik asks if she wants to get married, but not because he himself is bothered--it's because he doesn't want her master [[DeliberateValuesDissonance to "check" her virginity.]] She assures Haik that [[BeneathNotice the family won't notice anything as long as she doesn't get pregnant,]] and while the Spaniard's wife worries about Mirasol having sex before marriage, Mirasol just shrugs and [[MundaneSolution takes medicinal tea for contraception.]] In real-life, precolonial Filipinos were indeed less uptight before Spain arrived, and medieval Catholicism would have been ESPECIALLY strict. The REAL issue with marrying Haik is cultural due to how obviously ''indio'' he is--two years into the marriage, [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome Mirasol's master pulls a gun on him]] the moment he spots Haik's [[TattooAsCharacterType extensive, extremely non-Catholic tattoos.]]

* ''Literature/TheHouseInTheCeruleanSea'' is implied to be set TwentyMinutesIntoThePast with no Cellphones or internet but there's a mention of a gay church wedding that would be hard to get today.

* Averted somewhat with the second episode of ''Series/NewAmsterdam2008'', during a flashback set in the early 1940s, where John produces a baby out of wedlock with a black woman named Lily. She gets fired when her employer sees her with a white man and previously had to enter the hotel where they met through a service elevator. Her father becomes very upset with them both, and says they can never make it in the world (at this point interracial marriage was illegal in most states, for one[[note]]But never in New York.[[/note]]). The hotel staff react more reasonably than you would expect in real life in the 1940s, but they may not have known John and Lily were together (or it might not have been ''completely'' uncommon if a white man had an affair with a black woman). Lily herself breaks it off, knowing they'll be together in the long run. It turns out like this after she gets pregnant, and when they reunite in the black hospital after she has their baby, there are some very pointed looks.
* ''Series/{{MASH}}'' plays with this trope several different ways, depending on the character and the writer(s) of the episode. For the married Henry Blake and Trapper John, and early-season bachelor Hawkeye Pierce, EternalSexualFreedom is in full play; no one calls them out on their open and casual affairs. The married Frank Burns, on the other hand, is treated like scum for establishing an ongoing, if shallow, relationship with Margaret Houlihan, who gets the nickname "Hot Lips" out of it, although in their case this is more because they're {{Holier Than Thou}} {{hypocrite}}s.[[note]]Also an example of {{Values Dissonance}} - according to {{The Seventies}} views on morality, Hawkeye and Trapper are honest and open about their sexual life and thus the "good ones", while Frank Burns and Margaret Houlihan are not, and thus are the "bad ones".[[/note]] B.J. Hunnicutt, on the ''two'' occasions that he isn't completely faithful to his wife Peg, doesn't get a lot of judgment from the other characters; mostly, he pillories himself, though Hawkeye reacts angrily to his writing a letter confessing to Peg, saying it will only hurt her. Also, in later seasons Hawkeye's womanizing is ([[DependingOnTheWriter some times]]) deconstructed and he's shown as rather pathetic rather than as a positive example.
* ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'':
** Averted in the episode "[[Recap/TorchwoodS1E10OutOfTime Out Of Time]]" -- the temporally-displaced characters have to be told about modern sexual mores, and each reacts differently.
** On the other hand, in the episode "[[Recap/TorchwoodS1E12CaptainJackHarkness Captain Jack Harkness]]", Jack dances with and kisses another man in public -- in 1941 England without anyone so much as raising an eyebrow. [[spoiler:Subverted in the end, as it's mentioned near the start of the episode that the man dies during a training exercise the next day, and with everyone staring at them rather than ''the space/time rift next to them'', it's strongly implied that this was no coincidence.]]

* ''Series/{{Rome}}'' was ''filled'' with sex and violence, supposedly historically vetted. But while the show prides itself on well-researched use of DeliberateValuesDissonance, it also makes a few mistakes. For example, oral sex, referenced frequently with its Western connotations, was considered vulgar and disgusting by the otherwise-licentious Romans.[[note]][[BlueAndOrangeMorality To be more precise, it was a matter of perceived social dominance]] - ''receiving'' oral sex was quite OK, ''giving'' it was vilified. For anal sex it was the opposite.[[/note]]
* ''Series/SpartacusBloodAndSand'': While Romans did have lots and lots of sex, the show still plays this trope straight in regards to its use of female on female relationships; while it wasn't unheard of for slaves to perform lesbian sexual acts in secret for their mistress's entertainment, and possible for her to join in, lesbianism was not considered appropriate by general society (in most cases, it was simply disbelieved to exist however). Male same-sex relations were legal, but frequently mocked and often socially unacceptable to some degree. The main issue for Romans was who penetrated in anal sex, with the latter usually being of a lower social class, younger or a slave. If a man of higher standing ''received'' anal sex this was considered a huge disgrace and could result in a loss of social status ("infamy"). This was the primary distinction in Roman thought then on sexuality-"dominant" and "submissive", not the person's sex or gender. In fairness, though this doesn't come up all the consensual relationships between men which we see are by non-Romans/slaves who probably wouldn't care. The ''Lex Scantinia'' might have penalized sex with a freeborn minor male, or having receptive anal sex, though it's unclear (and was not enforced much if so, mostly in harassing opponents). Also a large sexual appetite, as the show has frequently, was condemned medically and ethically (of any kind), which cuts against much of the depiction (at least for Romans) though of course this doesn't mean it didn't happen.

* ''Series/DerryGirls'':
** Clare comes out as a lesbian at the end of Season 1. She faces only mild opposition from Erin, who overcomes these prejudices quickly, and the other characters start wearing rainbow bands at school in support of her. It's set in the early 90s in Derry, in a time when Ireland hadn't even legalized ''divorce'' yet (although Derry is part of Northern Ireland and subject to the UK's laws). Lisa Magee even admitted to using a RoseTintedNarrative for this bit.
** Michelle is shamelessly promiscuous, Aunt Sarah is a single parent, and James's mother wanted to get an abortion at first - with no one batting an eyelid at any of these. Possibly justified, since the main source of Northern Ireland's social conservatism is the more politically active segment of the Presbyterian community, typified by Ian Paisley's Free Presbyterians, rather than the Catholics who have usually supported left-wing parties such as the SDLP.
* ''Series/GarrowsLaw'': In the episode where Garrow defends a man charged with sodomy; the man faces the death penalty, but Garrow does not appear to be fazed at all when the man reveals to him that he is guilty of the crime. In reality, though at the time a few reformers (for instance utilitarian Jeremy Bentham) were sympathetic to gay people (but even he had kept those views private because of the opprobrium) Garrow wasn't known as among them-it's more probable he'd have a very negative view, like most people in those days.
* Zig-zagged in ''Series/LegendsOfTomorrow'', which sometimes notes that the time periods they visit aren't very keen on same-sex relationships, and sometimes glosses over it. Probably intentionally PlayedForLaughs in the Creator/JaneAusten episode, which opens with a society lady in 19th century Bath publicly declaring her love for a housemaid (on her wedding day!), and the rest of the wedding party being scandalised that she's in a relationship ''below her station''.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Tropico}} 3'', you can legalize same-sex marriage... in the 1950s. Granted, the Cold War is [[AnachronismStew grafted on to an island with mostly 1980-2010 sensibilities anyway]]. Not to mention for the description of the edict, your adviser mistakenly uses the [[HaveAGayOldTime original definition of the word gay,]] prompting him to question the controversy of letting happy people get married.
* In ''VideoGame/TheSimsMedieval'' no-one seems to object to premarital sex, promiscuity or same-sex relationships... in ''[[YeGoodeOldeDays the Middle Ages]]''.
* ''VideoGame/FallenLondon'' takes place in the 1890s and lets you blithely engage in homosexuality, pre-marital sex, threesomes, etc. It even lets you have a same gender Constant Companion and nobody cares. Mind you, London has been dragged a mile underground by bats, [[DeathIsCheap people frequently don't stay dead]], and there are [[{{Cthulhumanoid}} Rubbery Men]], [[{{Golem}} Clay Men]] and devils walking the streets so maybe the population just has bigger things to worry about.

[[folder: Radio]]

* While ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}'' is never directly stated to be any point in time, it is implied to be around the 1970s to 1990s, and VideoGame/Psychonauts2 reveals that two of the founding members of the Psychonauts are a gay couple who married 20 years prior. This would not be socially acceptable on any level back during that time, especially given the fact that they're high ranking members of a government organization.

** Averted in the episode "Out of Time" -- the temporally-displaced characters have to be told about modern sexual mores, and each reacts differently.
** On the other hand, in the episode "Captain Jack Harkness", Jack dances with and kisses another man in public -- in 1941 England without anyone so much as raising an eyebrow.