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On the Origins of Sodomy
Mar. 26th, 2003 10:45 amAn interesting article from Slate that explores a brief filed in the Lawrence v. Texas case currently up for consideration before the United States Supreme Court. It's quite interesting for his
In other words, homophobia is historically contingent, a solitary survival of a more general prohibition against any acts which didn't produce children for the sustenance of the race; the category of the "homosexual" didn't even appear until the late 19th century (and between bisexuality and Bert Archer seems to be fading away in the 21st century).
Sodomy Flaw
How the courts have distorted the history of anti-sodomy laws in America.
By Kristin Eliasberg
Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2003, at 3:00 PM PT
This Wednesday, the Supreme Court will be called on to decide in Lawrence v. Texas whether homosexuals have the constitutional right to have sex. The appellants are Houston residents John Geddes Lawrence and his partner, Tyron Garner—who were arrested and convicted of sodomy under a 1973 Texas statute criminalizing same-sex oral and anal sex. Last time the court considered this issue, in the 1986 case of Bowers v. Hardwick, it affirmed that homosexuals did not have the right to have consensual sex in private, either in Georgia—where Hardwick was prosecuted—or in any of the other 25 states with laws criminalizing sodomy.
( Read more... )
It was only in the late nineteenth century that the very concept
of the homosexual as a distinct category of person developed. The word “homosexual” appeared for the first time in a German pamphlet in 1868, and was introduced to the American lexicon only in 1892. JONATHAN NED KATZ, THE INVENTION OF HETEROSEXUALITY 10 (1995).2 As Michel Foucault has famously described this evolution, “the sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species.” 1 MICHEL FOUCAULT, THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY 43 (Robert Hurley trans. 1978).
In other words, homophobia is historically contingent, a solitary survival of a more general prohibition against any acts which didn't produce children for the sustenance of the race; the category of the "homosexual" didn't even appear until the late 19th century (and between bisexuality and Bert Archer seems to be fading away in the 21st century).
Sodomy Flaw
How the courts have distorted the history of anti-sodomy laws in America.
By Kristin Eliasberg
Posted Tuesday, March 25, 2003, at 3:00 PM PT
This Wednesday, the Supreme Court will be called on to decide in Lawrence v. Texas whether homosexuals have the constitutional right to have sex. The appellants are Houston residents John Geddes Lawrence and his partner, Tyron Garner—who were arrested and convicted of sodomy under a 1973 Texas statute criminalizing same-sex oral and anal sex. Last time the court considered this issue, in the 1986 case of Bowers v. Hardwick, it affirmed that homosexuals did not have the right to have consensual sex in private, either in Georgia—where Hardwick was prosecuted—or in any of the other 25 states with laws criminalizing sodomy.
( Read more... )
