PART 12
EARLY AMERICA
***, MARRIAGE, CHILDREN, GAYS, LESBIANS, BOYS AS GIRLS, ABORTION,
BREECHING, FAMILY AND OTHER MYTHS
Homo***ality
The natives presented another factor. It is difficult to believe all that
the records tell us of their ***ual habits; facts were likely distorted to
make a case to seize land. According to the records, various tribes
practiced polygamy, institutionalized (mostly religious) male
homo***uality, promiscuity (especially as a courtesy to travelers) and
abortion and infanticide, as well as regulating family size by late
weaning. If homo***uality were as characteristic of Indian culture as some
early records would suggest, the Indians would not have scorned the early
all-male settlements because of the lack of families as strongly as they
did. Their criticism of a society that, by absence of women, was at least
suggestive of a state of homo***uality similar to that under which the
Indians were alleged to have lived indicates the allegations were largely
unfounded. Despite problems of veracity in the records, it is clear that
some traditions were different enough to cause discomfort for the
Europeans, and at least one community emulated "free love" Indian
practices, to the disgust of its Plymouth neighbors.
SOURCE: The Writer's Guide, Everyday Life in Colonial America From 1607 -
1783. Dale Taylor. Weiter's Digest Books (1997) p. 120 - 133
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Sodomy was a male crime and required evidence of "unnatural" penetration,
including two witnesses, for the death penalty. It included male/male and
male/female anal *** and buggery (*** with an animal), but it did not
include female homo***uality. We know of a small number of buggery
executions in the seventeenth century, none in the eighteenth. Because
buggery was believed to result in monstrous offspring, a man convicted was
required to point out his partners, who were then killed before him as a
prelude to his own execution. With proper punishment and confession, a
male
homo***ual could be reintegrated into society without stigma.
The status of boys in English society changed over the period. Until they
were breeched, boys were considered women. After adolescence they were
men.
In the intervening years they were neither during the early period. With
time, breeching came to signify acceptance as men. This change occurred in
England about 1680, but until then, boys were a perfectly acceptable
outlet
for male ***uality. Since the prevailing English view of ***uality was
based in power and the submission to power, no man would willingly submit
to another man. A boy, however, who was less than a man and may have been
considered a woman, was under no stigma at all in providing ***, and no
male lost any standing by taking it. This places special relevance on the
boys sent to Virginia in 1607 and other early settlements, but would
surely
have run afoul of the New England strictures against nonprocreative ***,
although the aristocratic nature of Chesapeake society almost assuredly
meant English aristocratic practices were continued without comment.
Needless to say, the records contain little about pederasty.
SOURCE: The Writer's Guide, Everyday Life in Colonial America From 1607 -
1783. Dale Taylor. Weiter's Digest Books (1997) p. 120 - 133
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"The sin conception of same-*** ***ual activity prevailed in the
colonies and in the United States before the late 19th century.(7) During
this period, the modern concept of hetero***uality and homo***uality did
not exist,(8) rather, almost all non procreative or
non-marital ***ual activities were considered immoral and made
criminal.(9)
Yet those who transgressed the society's ***ual moral code were not
stigmatized as long as they repented.(10) Furthermore, sharp distinctions
were not drawn between same-*** ***ual activity and other forms of sin;
rather sodomy represented a capacity for sin inherent in everyone.(11)
This conception of all non marital or non procreative ***ual acts
as sinful is reflective of the largely homogeneous society in which the
family was the basic economic and social unit. (12) The homogeneity of
society also explains the absence of distinction between homo***ual and
had
hetero***ual ***ual orientation. The idea that some members of a
community
might be different and have different ***ual orientation was less
intuitive
in such a society than the contrary notion that all members of the
community were equally capable of moral transgression. (13)
FOOTNOTES:
(7) See J. KATZ, GAY/LESBIAN ALMANAC 31-48 (1983).
(8) See D'Emilio, Making and Unmaking Minorities: The Tensions Between
Gay
Politics and History, 14 N.Y.U. REV. L. & SOC. CHANGE 915, 917 (1986);
Goldstein, History, Homo***uality, and Political Values: Searching for the
Hidden Determinants of Bowers v. Hardwick, 97 YALE L.J. 1073, 1087 (1988)
The terms "homo***ual" and "hetero***ual" and the concepts behind them
were
not popular in the United States until the 1920's See J. KATZ, supra note
7, at 16.
(9) See J. KATZ, Supa note 7, at 29-65; Law, Homo***uality and the Social
Meaning of Gender, 1988 Wis. L. REV. 187, 199. However, ***ual acts
between
two women were generally not criminalized because the laws only sought to
deter "the unnatural spilling of seed, the biblical sin of Onan." J.
DIEMILIO & E. FREEDMAN, INTIMATE MATTERS: A HISTORY OF ***UALITY
IN AMERICA 122 (1988); see also Law, supra, at 202 n75("The traditional
common law and religious condemnation of homo***uality did not encompass
women.").
(10) See J. D'EMILIO & E. FREEDMAN, supra note 9, at 15.
(11)D'Emilio, supra note 8, at 917.
(12)See Law, supra note 9, at 199.
(13) See id.
(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: ***UAL ORIENTATION AND THE LAW, by the editors of
the Harvard Law Review, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, London,
England. (1989) pp 2-3)
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The 1960s generation did not invent premarital and out-of wedlock ***.
Indeed, the straitlaced ***ual morality of nineteenth-century
Anglo-American societies, partly revived in the 1950s, seems to have been
a
historical and cultural aberration. Anthropologist George Murdock examined
cultural rules concerning ***ual behavior in 250 societies and found that
only 3 shared our "generalized *** taboo" on ***ual behavior of any type
outside marriage. Nor is there evidence that homo***ual or lesbian
activity
is more frequent now than it was in the past; the claim that increased
toleration of such activity ****tends reproductive doom does not mesh with
the fact that two-thirds of the historical societies for which evidence is
available have condoned homo***ual relations.9
9. Kain, Myth of Family Decline, p. 127; John Gillis, "From Ritual to
Romance: Toward an Alternative History of Love," in Emotion and Social
Change: Toward a New Psychohistory, ed. Carol and Peter Stearns (New York:
Holmes and Meier, 1988), p. 94; Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and
George
Chauncey, eds., Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past
(New York: NAL Books, 1989), p. 10; David Greenberg, The Construction of
Homo***uality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
SOURCE: The Way We Never Were American Families and the Nostalgia Trap
Stephanie Coontz Basic Books, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers
(1992)
p 184
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http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/exhibitions/sw25/case5.html
With Gay American History, Jonathan Ned Katz published the first book of
do***ents relating to homo***uality in American history. This fascinating
and compendious source ranges from the sixteenth century up to present
times; its texts include everything from denunciations of sodomy in
colonial America to modern protests against homo***ual persecution.
Comparable in its historical scope is Lillian Faderman's Surpassing the
Love of Men, which examines the history of romantic friend****p between
women from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. Focusing on the
changing status of male-male love from the late classical era to the
middle
ages, John Boswell's groundbreaking Christianity, Social Tolerance, and
Homo***uality finds gay people and gay subcultures even further back in
history. By demonstrating the im****tant presence of same-*** desires,
friend****ps, and ***ual practices throughout Western history, these books
were crucial in opening up new fields for investigation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Male-Male Intimacy in Early America Beyond Romantic Friend****ps
William Benemann
http://www.haworthpress.com/store/SampleText/5479.pdf
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GAY AND LESBIAN HISTORY Compiled by Rictor Norton
INDEX: [General History] [Anthologies] [Lesbian: General] [Pre-Modern
Lesbian] [Modern Lesbian] [Literary History] [Language] [Theory] [Famous
Homo***uals] [Anthropology] [Ancient] [Medieval] [Early Modern]
[Renaissance] [European] [English Early Modern] [English Modern] [German]
[Dutch] [French] [Spain & ****tugal] [Modern American] [China, India and
Japan] [Middle East] [Latin America] [Africa] [Colonial and non-European
Updated 11 April 2005
North America: Pre-Modern History
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/bibamer1.htm
***************************************************************
You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the US and a couple from overseas as well]
***************************************************************
.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why
"a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v.
Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
****************************************************************
USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
*****************************************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
****************************************************************
|
