The 1800s Usher in New Attitudes

The 19th century ushered in strikingly new attitudes toward homosexuality in Europe and America. Until this era, gays and lesbians had not been viewed as people who were homosexual, but as people who happened to engage in sexual acts with members of their own gender. In other words, homosexuality was something one did, not something one was.

Subscribers to this tenet believed people consciously chose to perform homosexual acts, rather than suffered from "disease" or "psychological deviancy," opinions that would arise later. Consequently, homosexuality was considered a crime—in some cases, punishable by death—in some nations. Between 1800 and 1834, 80 men were hung in Great Britain for committing sodomy. And in 1834 Russia, muzhelozhstvo—which means: men lying with men and, in turn, anal intercourse—was punishable by up to five years of Siberian exile.

Lesbianism was not immune from public censure either. In 1810, teachers Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie were accused of "improper and criminal conduct" by a student's mother.

Other governments, however, took a decidedly more liberal stance. In 1804, France recodified the Code of 1791 (renamed Code Napoleon), decriminalizing all private sexual acts between consenting adults. The Netherlands, as a result of their annexation by France, was forced to accept the tenets of Code Napoleon in 1810. But despite these gains, in England in 1828, the Offenses Against the Person Act decreased the amount of proof necessary for a sodomy conviction, making prosecution of this crime easier.

Although persecution of homosexuality, combined with no standard terminology, made it impossible for unified and visible sub-cultures to exist, individual gays and lesbians did occasionally surface to the public forefront. In America in 1834, James Buchanan, later President of the United States, met William Rufus De Van King, who became his nearly inseparable companion for almost a decade. Buchanan and King's relationship was well-known in political circles, with Andrew Jackson referring to King as "Miss Nancy" and others calling King "Buchanan's better half."

In America, European-Americans studying Native Americans discovered the presence of berdaches, men who dressed in typical female garb and assumed the duties of women. Berdaches also served a spiritual role in Native American society. One of the most famous berdaches, We'wha of the Navajo, went to Washington, D.C., in 1886, where he charmed political heavyweights, including the Speaker of the House and President Grover Cleveland.

The famous American poet Walt Whitman published his well-known Leaves of Grass in 1860, which included numerous references to comradely love between men, inspiring the admiration of both John Addington Symonds and Edward Carpenter, gay writers who would later write impassioned works supporting homosexuality.

Toward the end of the 19th century, "sexologists" surfaced in Europe. These men, whose work analyzed sexuality, were among the first to create a rudimentary vocabulary that many would use to define homosexuality for decades to come. In 1869, Karl Maria Kertbeny coined the term "homosexuality." Homosexuality was first used in an anonymously published pamphlet, in which Kertbeny advocated the repeal of Prussia's sodomy laws.

From that point on, European sexologists have debated the nature of homosexuality. In 1886, Richard von Krafft-Ebig compiled 200 case studies of deviant sexual practices, homosexuality among them, in a work entitled Psycopathia Sexualis. Havelock Ellis, another sexologist, borrowed heavily from the case study model to write Sexual Inversion, which proposed homosexuals were created by a combination of biology and upbringing. Ellis also believed some people who were not genetically predetermined homosexuals could become so if they had weak characters and were influenced by "inverts." Along with the arguments for homosexuality being a disease, a "third" sex altogether and a curable psychological aberration, various forms of "cure" were espoused, including castration, hypnosis, aversion therapy, and, with the appearance of Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis.

In society at large, however, homosexuality was still considered a crime. In one of the most notorious trials of the century, the flamboyantly gay British playwright Oscar Wilde was charged and tried for sodomy and indecent behavior in 1895. Despite his eloquent appeals for love between men, Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison and hard labor. He died penniless in 1900.

Although sexologists helped gays and lesbians find words to describe their lives, they still could not convince society that homosexuality, in particular male love, was not a crime against nature. Thus Wilde's case and sad circumstances opened the beginning of the 20th century.

The 1700's

The 1900's