Not related to this blog at all, but I’m gay and I don’t want to see anyone saying being gay got you the death penalty in 1899.
“The most surprising thing about homosexuality in the Old West is not that it was rare in the rugged, macho world of the cowboy, but that it was so common and so not a big deal.”
“Society didn’t really designate people as homosexual or heterosexual through most of the 19th century; it was not really until the 20th century that those identities crystallized.”
“But nobody would have called them gay or even homosexual—a word that wasn’t even used until 1868. (Heterosexual is an even newer word, which first appeared in print in 1924.)”
“They may have been called punk… There was even a name for same-sex “marriages”… cowboys and miners settled into partnerships that other men recognized (and sometimes referred to) as ‘bachelor marriages.’”
“As early as 1948, Alfred C. Kinsey in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male shocked many when he found “the highest frequencies of the homosexual we have ever secured anywhere have been in particular rural communities in some of the remote sections of the country… There is a fair amount of sexual contact among the older males in Western rural areas… These are men who have faced the rigors of nature in the wild. They live on realities and on a minimum of theory. Such a background breeds the attitude that sex is sex, irrespective of the nature of the partner with whom the relation is had.”
(Male) homosexuality fell under the blanket term “sodomy” during the 1700s and 1800s. “Sodomy” was no longer punishable by death by the late 1700s (except in the Carolinas). ALL recorded trials against “sodomy” were cases of rape until 1880, meaning consensual homosexual sex was not really being punished by the law at the time.
“In the 19th century, lesbians were only accepted if they hid their sexual orientation and were presumed to be merely friends with their partners. For example, the term “Boston marriage” was used to describe a committed relationship between two unmarried women who were usually financially independent and often shared a house…"
Fast Facts
- The poet Walt Whitman wrote openly about homosexuality in the 19th century.
- What is known as the first gay American novel was published in 1870.
- In the same year was the first published categorization of sexual identities, ie. homosexual vs. hetersexual.
- “Lesbian” was used as early as 1732.
- Not particularly relevant, but this trend of acceptance for gay men and women continued growing until the mid 1930s.
Sources:
True West Magazine and Wikipedia. I don’t have time rn to pull more sources but feel free to do your own research.
Willa Cather is a very famous early 19th century Midwestern/rural writer and she had a loving female partner named Edith (not sure if she identified as bi or lesbian).
