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For Sale Apr 2, 2026 at 9:45 PM

Was the "twin beds rule" of The Hays Code an actual literal government conspiracy?

Posted by Iocnar

It's so illogical it'd have to be. Unmarried couples I understand. I get that. But married couples? That's actually offensive to insist that its offensive. ​And they're even wearing pajamas and everything. I think it was a literal government conspiracy to see what kind of illogical control they could get the people to put up with. How much could they push people and the people would just shut up. Because look at what was going on at the time. The Monkey Scopes trial and all kinds of stuff. Illogical nonsense that simply requires that people just shut up. Could this kind of thing ever be proven? I guess the best place to start is with people who are still alive and went through that.
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StillStanding_96 Apr 2, 2026 +9
The Hayes Code wasn’t a law. The film industry imposed it on itself
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GeoleVyi Apr 2, 2026 +1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hays_Code The only reason they imposed it, was because the governments of various states and the federal government / courts were going to impose actual laws. The code was the only way to take it out of the governments hands, for the moment, and they still had to deal with oversight. As examples, New York and Virginia instituded boards of censorship, because the supreme court decided that the first amendment didn't apply to films.
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StillStanding_96 Apr 2, 2026
So… you agree?
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GeoleVyi Apr 2, 2026 +2
No, because the film industry was going to be imposed upon no matter what. If left to their own devices, they would never have done this to themselves. The way you worded it, it sounds like you think the film industry self-censored for no reason other than christian puritan nonsense. The fact is, the government had already created censorship for them, and was threatening harsher steps, so the studios said "what if we just do this instead" and then they broke every single boundary they could get away with.
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longjumpingtote Apr 3, 2026 +2
/u/GeoleVyi is right. And to add, the film industry made some nasty, delightful but nasty content over its first few decades. It wasn't run by Puritanical Christians. The nasty content is why the government wanted to crack down. So the movie industry self-regulated to avoid that, because once the government starts telling you what you cannot say, they'll also start telling you what you have to say.
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longjumpingtote Apr 2, 2026 +7
The government wasn't involved in the Hays Code. The Scopes trial was in 1925. The bed thing was to not lead children to believe adults had sex. Dumb, maybe. But they also wouldn't let there be the sound of a flushing toilet, or use of the word "pregnant." There was a lot. It was basically an attempt to *keep* the government from taking over and censoring, so they were more restrictive than they probably needed to be. Also, mores were different in different decades. It was a reflection of society at that time. In fifty years, people will look back at you and me and think how uptight we were.
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Iocnar Apr 2, 2026
Wow thank you, yeah and even more than that. And I'd be interested to hear if anyone knows any exceptions. Apparently it wasnt just about toilets flushing but they couldnt even show toilets at all. The Hays Code was from 1934 to 1968 and it wasnt until 1960 when the most powerful filmmaker in the world showed one in Psycho. Apparently that was the first "mainstream" movie to do it since the code began. 
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Technical_Airline205 Apr 2, 2026 +4
Well, the film industry started the Hayes Code to avoid government regulation. So you could call it a film industry conspiracy.
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StillStanding_96 Apr 2, 2026 +1
If by conspiracy they mean “a plan to accomplish their stated goals” then I suppose so
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BenchConscious1003 Apr 2, 2026 +2
Lots of luck trying to prove that. It had never occurred to me that those things were caused by a conspiracy. I've always thought they simply reflected the values of the day. America was a very puritanical country at the time.==== In the same broad area, there's the McCarthy witch hunt for Communists in the US .(late 1940.s early 1950's) ==even thought being a communist has always been a basic right under the First Amendment. McCarthyism destroyed a lot of lives.== I've never seen that as a conspiracy either, although I suppose it could have been.===There's an aphorisms I especially like; The simplest explanation is often the right explanation (Occam's Razor) "---- is the [problem-solving](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem-solving) principle that recommends searching for explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements. It is also known as the **principle of parsimony** or the **law of parsimony** " It can be tricky to decide which things are the result of a conspiracy and how much depends on one's level of paranoia.
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Major_Willingness234 Apr 2, 2026 +3
The Hayes Code was a real thing and had nothing to do with the government.
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ConflagWex Apr 2, 2026 +3
You're underestimating how prudish everyone was back then. Sex was the domain of the devil, and to imply it happened even between married adults was blasphemous. It was more religious indoctrination than "conspiracy to test how far they could push".
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Strict-Star-5550 Apr 2, 2026 +1
nah bruh
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nohopeforhomosapiens Apr 2, 2026 +1
I don't think it is that. It was because, generally, actors are not married to each other so it would be very intimate to show them in bed together. For the few that were married like Lucy and Desi, it was already established and would have been considered inappropriate for family television. It's like not allowing swearing on tv for so long. Of course people used curses and lewd language (much less than today but depending on the type of person yes) but you couldn't put that on the air. There were many things that people didn't speak about openly in society, and therefore those things were also not appropriate to show on tv if it wouldn't normally be part of conversation between friends or family. My adoptive grandfather was an actor in old hollywood, if you grew up in US you probably have seen at least one of his films in history class. He told me a lot about the industry and how it used to be, the coverups, the harshness, and he never mentioned anything like that.
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rabbi420 Apr 2, 2026 +1
You *do* know that the “Hays Code” was created and enforced by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, a private, non-government organization… right? There’s only ever been the threat of Congress *maybe* doing something, but no direct government action led to the code. And dude, the Scopes Trial *disproves* your point because it’s the government *losing* an attempt at a culture war.
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JovialPursuit Apr 2, 2026 +1
When they were allowed to lie in bed together, they had to keep one foot on the floor.
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SuperBearJew Apr 2, 2026 +1
No, there isn't a way to prove that the Hays Code was a government conspiracy to assert social control, because that's an r/conspiracy-brained take that you just made up without any backing. Ockhams Razor is in effect here. It's infinitely more likely that the Hays Code was a result of a more prudish society almost 100 years ago, over some vast conspiracy by the government to assert social control through... Two beds on screen.
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