today we're we're going to be concluding our discussion of african homosexuality and then we're going to move into. so we will we have talked about pre-k, colombian, native americans, same sex sexuality. we're going to work through african same sex sexuality. and now we're going to start talking about those white to those white colonists, as in the article that that you all read, sodomy in colonial new england. so just a little review. i'm you know, why do precolonial africans sex, sex, sex even matter in 2023? you know what's, the point of even understanding that then we'll move on to why would owners tolerate same sex relations among enslaved people? wouldn't they want them to be heterosexual and breeding? we'll talk about attitudes in modern africa. i'm sorry, in modern africa. then was there same sex sexuality among whites and colonial do with england? well, yeah, sure there was. but what evidence do we have and why is that significant? what does it mean? what does it matter? we'll talk about sodomy at sea. what does it mean to be in a same sex environment? and how is that notions of same sex, sexual ity? they're different than in a more conventional. so we'll talk about pirates and sailors and so forth. the rise of the italian vice and if the colonists conclude that sodomy is so bad and is immediate, the cap offense, why? and we know what's going on. why is it so rarely prosecuted. how does that make sense to and we'll talk specifically about the cases of stanton and we'll talk a fair amount about him, stephen gordon and that thomas thomas a whole and why those significant then we'll talk about god bears conclusions about all of this and then again why does this matter does this matter in 2023? is this sort of an intellectual exercise? and i'm going to argue, obviously, that it isn't okay. when we left off to kind of a review to one of the reasons that i think it's really important to be looking at same sex sexuality in pre-colonial africa is that remember, there was that whole quote i wrote to you last time about coretta king and how frustrated she was that the civil rights movement had not really embraced the gay and lesbian movement. and we talked about there were a lot of churches, black historically, black churches who have also been pretty negative on the topic. so you remember this this slide. this was after they're trying to get the matthew shepard act passed. and what was the point of the matthew shepard act. did you i know we haven't talked about it yet, but anybody you just know offhand, no. okay. never mind. so the idea was we want this to be a offense. we have hate crimes. we don't want that to be left as to local enforcement. we want this to be, you know, a federal thing. so this minister is saying, don't muzzle our pulpit. so we oppose the matthew shepard act. this is misguided added compassion and so on. when we see all these other black ministers who who support this. so, so and much of the argument was this is not african this is not something that the african should take pride in. this is something that has sort of come out of the whole you know, slavery experience and so forth and so part of black pride should be rejecting this. so it's it's not only as a as a sin by many fundamentalist ministers, but in this case, there's a whole racial component to it as well. okay. so therefore, i think it's significant that. yes, georgia, just to clarify, the matthew shepard act was the church saying. they didn't want it legalized. i'm sorry. let's let's go back and go over this again. so congress is is passing the matthew shepard act there. they're saying we want hate crimes based on sexual to be though we want that to be a federal crime. and that's important because then you can get federal officials into investing so they're saying, you know, we want that so here we see a bunch of black churches saying, no, no, no, homosexuality is a sin. and we also believe that it's it's it's bad for our race and that this is is something that un-african it's it's it's it's something out of racial pride. we should also we does that make sense so congress is trying to say that the black church is rejecting homosexuality. no i'm sorry congress is just trying to this. i'm glad you're asking is just trying to pass the matthew shepard act. this is what we want. we want to make hate crimes based on sexuality, a federal offense. these ministers are saying no, no, don't muzzle. are our pulpits. we want to be able to speak openly against homosexuality. and again, the point is, this is i mean, got white churches that are you know, that are doing this, too. but the point i'm trying to make here is that this is particularly an issue among many african-americans. and that was that quote from coretta scott king last time about that as well. yeah, good, good. yeah. okay. so with this in mind, you were talking a little a little bit about this last time. this boy wives and female husbands, studies in african homes, sexualities. and so we see this practice and we talked a little bit about this last time. so you become a a boy wife or a female husband to another man. you're a man in pre-colonial africa. is that a permanent situation now? no. how long's it last. mm. grace until the boy was grow up and then they marry a woman. and this cycle continues again, right? exactly so it's almost like an apprentice, kind of a kind, a situation, you know? exactly and again, this is not something that we've have one or two documented cases of i mean, this is something that they're, you know, this is in many places in africa different tribes. and as we've decided, not always in lockstep with the same traditions. oh, which reminds me, i meant to say this at the beginning of the hour, but i'll say it now. remember sean's question last time about native americans and if if you know, if the mother has the dream. yeah. yeah. so i had quite a hard time finding the answer to that. but the answer is yes. mothers were talking about these dreams. if they had a dream that they felt when they were pregnant, that indicated that their child might be one of those, you know, all those different terms, you know, that we used. but that wasn't a guarantee. that didn't mean that if a if a child was having dreams that also was not a guarantee. but they were discussed, which what your question was. okay, so i got a little off track there. all right so what's important for us is that we know that is same sex sexual going on in precolonial africa and it's not this rare secret, you know, hidden thing. this is part of the african tradition and this matters when we get to the diaspora or the dispersal. so when are forcibly taken and sent throughout the world. this is part of their tradition just like the native american traditions that we talked about last time. so this idea that this that any kind of same sex sexuality is un-african is just not understanding history. all right. okay, so what i want to get into next is. remember we talked about those plantation books last time. and so we see all kinds of we learn a lot about these plantation owners and their attitudes about slavery and so forth from from these books. and one of the things that that we see is there is certainly recognition of same sex sexuality among the people that they enslaved. and i want to emphasize that we're talking about the earliest period now. okay. we're not talking about right before the civil war or the 1800s. we're talking about, you know, in the 1600s. we're talking in the early colonial a period. so we what what was surprising to me in reading some of these is how much sort of you know, they're recognizing that they're that male slaves or enslaved people or having sex with other enslaved people and. they're not outraged about it. there's sort of commenting on this. so i wanted to ask you this, because you might think, well, number one, why would they tolerant if this is you know, a christian society and also wouldn't think that people who are owning peoples would want a lot of sexual. why for reproduction. yeah. to buy enslaved people is you know it's very very so i just want to kind of go this with you so in this early period, the work that the enslaved people are doing is hard. they are pulling, you know, clearing, pulling stumps, draining swamps. so what kind of slave going to be the top dollar? who do you want the most if you're a slave owner, what are you looking for? you're looking for male slaves. you want run, you want strength both. and so we're going to see this is the even though they're more expensive they were going to see a lot more males slaves than you are than you are female. so so they're simply really preferred in this early colonial that makes sense. but then look this is a rendering of on the on the ship over and you can see their sex segregation you know doesn't seem not you would expect what's why would you do this wouldn't you want people to be reproducing. yeah i feel like the slaves having same sex relations kind of furthers the idea that they are immoral people and that they they're animals they're yeah. so you're right there's but no that's certainly true and we get a lot of that in those in those books. what were you going to say? i was just going to say, like it also we because i mean they were already packing in people really tightly. they not have enough room for the chance of survival any like babies produced on board like they wouldn't have a very high chances or like the mothers for matter. right, exactly. so it's like, okay, this is not some controlled where everything is settled and forth. it's such a perilous journey. so yeah, you're exactly right. and you're really getting at what i am. what looking for here is that there isn't an effort in this early period to encourage breeding. now, you don't have to write all these down. okay? i just want you to really understand how how perilous life was. so these are again, these are these are averages and they're in the 1600s. so white colonists are living to be maybe their early forties and it's lower in the south there's worse water life is harsher and so forth of enslaved peoples. 20 to 21. all right so more than half of enslaved infants die in their first year that that contrast that with 10 to 30% for whites and you start getting a sense of how hard life is of these enslaved children who survive half as many as whites make it to 14. if you survive childhood. you would likely die at least ten years earlier than than whites. okay. so now does it make sense why they're not so interested in breeding at this time? it's like, yeah, it's just not going to it's not just it's just not going to work. so in the harshest climate lasted about six years, lasted about six years. and then they would, you know, by bye bye new ones. okay, so, so basically the idea is, look, we have a pregnant woman, we can't worker as hard particularly towards the end of the you're going to have give her some time off. and in the end baby's probably going to die anyway. so now we're, we're really natural increase in the 1600s is not a big not a big goal so what does that to. oh yeah. let me come back to this for a second. as well, also, i wanted to to emphasize that what female slaves, what are they doing? what kind of labor are they doing in the 1600s? georgia. household courts cooking and cleaning is kind of the i mean, certainly was true. there were black women who were serving as mammies and maids, so forth. but again, i want to emphasize that this is this this is in this early period. this picture obviously was not taken the 1600s, after giving you some know some notion here but that enslaved women mostly field work everybody is doing hard outdoor labor and in fact women the vast majority of enslaved women do work often in greater proportion than the men, because men are mostly doing field work as well. but because they're men, they're also granted some of the more skilled tasks. the coopers who make barrels, the blacks who the workers, you know that that kind of stuff. so it's not like, oh, you know, if you're a household slave, maybe you'd be able to sustain that pregnancy in the 1600s. the idea that anybody is going to survive this this hard labor, especially a pregnant woman, is pretty, pretty, pretty farfetched. so are you all you're all with me here? any questions about any of this are so so. all right. so we do see, you know, disproportionately large population and and again you know ana, you kind of raise this point that slave owners don't when they find out that male slaves are having sex oh my god this you know they say, well, they're animals. what what can you and there's also sort of a you know, if this going to keep them complacent, if this is going to give any kind of, you know, you know, keep them going or whatever, then fine and they can tisk, tisk, and they say it proves they're barbarians and so forth. but the point is, it's not just like, oh, my god, this is this is horrible we're not going to allow it. i okay, so. and i wanted to go back a bit, i'm not sure that we hit this hard last time as maybe we should have. this is from that reading you did a priest, which is in medium spiritual in the african homosexual. it was a lot like what we saw in the native americans, what tended to to decide side whether it was acceptable, frowned upon in an african community to have these same sex relations. do you remember in. yes, the economy it keeps coming up and again i think that sickness i was like oh well this is what pre-colombian africa was like really depended. it didn't just depend on oh, it was just these particular peoples. it's how were those particular people doing economically? so what what would make it more acceptable? what kind of economic conditions? yeah, joe, they're very successful where they would in the infant death rate was a lot lower. so more babies were viable and so they didn't need as many like children to grow up and just just just to do the flip side of this, which would make it less acceptable, the infant death rate is really high and they're doing they're struggling to keep their population alive. right. right, exactly. so it has much less to do with the morality and this and that. it has to do with as we as we've seen before, economics. i just wanted to kind of today say in africa, we see a lot of some of the same attitudes we were just talking about with some of those black churches that is a tremendous amount of hope for obeah in many african nations. so here we see that the cartoon moon, the minister, a homosexual it is un-african and foreign. that's the idea. oh, this is a western thing that has infecting african society. what is the woman saying? oh, so that was the bible. father so. so here's the african homophobes club. oh a new member. show your credentials to the chairman. the house rules don't apply. human rights to homosexuals do call an african. oh so you know so this business about understanding what was happening in pre-columbian american societies and pre-colonial africa it's not just an intellectual curiosity. i mean the missing understanding of that is actively being used to persecute homosexuals in india, africa. let's see what was going to have this upper body. yeah, here we go this is from 2014. a new law in nigeria signed by the announcement has made it illegal for gay people to even hold a meeting the same sex marriage prohibition an act also criminalizes homosexual clubs associations and organizations with penalties to 14 years in jail. nigeria's law is not as draconian as a ugandan bill passed. this month, which would punish aggravated homosexual acts with life in prison. nigeria is one of 38 african countries. about 70% of the continent that have laws. gay people. the motivation for the nigerian law is given that the country is already one that has made homosexual wolf sex illegal and many gay people were not demanding to be married. a country where being gay can get a person lynched by a mob. so it's like, you know, not no same sex marriage, no same sex sexuality in parts of northern nigeria where islamic law is enforced, gays and lesbians can be legally stoned to death. so when we say africa has is pretty homophobic. it's just like, oh, these are some attitudes that were that we're talking about. okay. so so. in 2021, the ugandan ban on same sex marriage relations are reinforced and of course, we do see pushback against this, but it's very hard, obviously, to do in africa. so we so here's the like outside the ugandan in london. so so anyway, so there are real reverberations for these at the for, you know, this misandry standing of history. you're all with me. okay? all right. so now we're to move on to what are the white people doing? so here, as colonization is starting to heat up, we have native we know what they're history has been. we have african boys. we know their what their history has been on this on this topic. so what's going to happen with these europeans who, of course, are going to increasingly dominate? so what do we know about white attitudes towards same sex sexuality among whites know they seem to wink at with slaves. it's like, you know, sort of proves that proves our point. what about their fellow whites? hmm. the reading talked about how it kind of a mixed reaction where a lot of ministers and high ranking people vigorously against it but the more local level a little more ambivalent. yeah let's stick with the official view first that's that's a good distinction. so officially what's the attitude. yes i'm sorry, alena. yeah, it's frowned upon. they shouldn't be able to encounter or engage in same sex relations. yes, it is. but it's not just frowned upon. and so here we have a five catholic priest burned to death for homosexuality in ghent, 1578. it's a pretty clear statement. all right. so it's like, you know, it's much like, oh, we wish you wouldn't do that. no, this is this is an unacceptable and. let's see here, according to rupp on page 90 and i, it all marked you. here we go. this is what sean was starting to address. rupp says. sorry if the europeans could not conceive of a person neither clearly male nor female, if they vigorously repressed same sex sexual experimentations in relationship, that did not mean that gender transgression and same sex sexuality were unknown in the world. explorers and settlers came despite longstanding civil and religious condemnation and the threat of execution. individuals did engage in same sex sexual behavior in a number of contexts, sometimes without the punishment that the law prescribed or without even the disapproval of their neighbors. first time i read that sodomy in colonial england. i was shocked by it by some of the some of the material that that appeared in their. so is same sex sexuality happening in colonial new england among whites? yes. we know for sure. how do we know for sure joe, you work documents? not many, but in reading we read like a few summaries of them. so we know we know that there are some investigations of this and to even to go back a little further. it's a capital offense in new england from 1641, number eight, prohibit sodomy. if man lives with mankind as he lay it with a woman, both of them had committed abomination. they both shall surely be put to death. why do you put a law like this on your books. because it's happening. yeah i mean, even if we didn't have these cases, i think the mere fact that we have this law tells us that it is. it is indeed. it is indeed happening. and and a lot of these cases involve who are the ones that are that we know about, what kinds of what kinds of it's almost always men are being investigated and what just generally speaking, what do you know about them? lena it's usually a higher status with lower status, yes, higher status. this is this is really significant. officers in particular, we see on you at sea and they don't tend to be, you know, if they're having you consensual sex with other we don't hear about it who do we hear about who is complaining. the bit younger their subordinates essentially yeah especially boys the families of of of cabin boys and so forth they're the ones who are complaining this. so it's like, okay, we have these men in power and even, you know, even back then we feel that this is an abuse of their of their of their power. now, i wanted to ask you a couple of things. those these men aboard ship who are having sex with other men here, we've got pirates dressing as women and. we have this whole sodomy in the pirate tradition. how do we how do we think about are these gay men? are these homosexual men? are these trans are these cross-dress orders? do those terms fit? how come they don't? catherine, i don't think it's they didn't have those terms at the time, so there's no way we can prescribe our modern onto the 1600s. yeah, it is. it doesn't doesn't fit. it does it isn't quite, quite. and the other thing i, i'm driving out here is that, you know, these all these are sex segregated societies. if you're going to have sex, if you're at sea for you know, however long you're either going to have sex with other men or you're not going to have it. so it's like, you know, if you're in the prisons system, you know, there are a number of if you're in a same sex community. we'll talk about cowboys out in the west and so forth. it's like, all right, you know, can you say, oh, my god, look, you know, they're all gay. it's like, well, you know, it's either having this kind of sex or or no sex, okay we don't of course, know very much about the consensual sex. the only sex that we know about for sure is what the the ones that make it to court. so we we only what we know for sure is slim, but we we do know, you know, certain things. all right. oh, i also wanted mention this. how is it that vendors comes to be called the home? the italian vice, which is male homosexuality? how did that happen? we know it's happening all over the world. how come venice, of all places, was in about how an urban areas allowed for homosexuality to happen? yeah, more so in rural areas. yeah, this is a huge port town. we've got all people, you know, men who've been on boats, you know, coming in, you. they're going to female prostitute, but they're also many of them are having sex with other men. and sean, you're exactly right that we're going to see port cities tend to be some of the earliest centers of you know where we were sort of identifiably what we would what we would call today sort of a, you know, a gay a gay community. it's just remember, rich, that like that the first day. i think that economically the notion of being you know, you know, have been being gay just does not in in until these stories come up until we have this these urban population. people are living on farms they live in heterosexual families. this is how they they have children to help them with their their labor and so forth. we may have two men meeting together behind the barn to have sex, but they're not going to have a gay relationship. women may sneak off and have together, but they're not going to be a lesbian couple. this just is economically once again, this is just not not going to. but with the rise of cities, there begins to a possibility. if you work and make wages, you don't have to depend on having children to help you with your with your labor. yeah. oh. so it's like when she talks about how homosexuality activity like mainly occurred at sea, like she said, it was hard to tell if. some men maybe sought out like a career at sea for homosexuality, like are your thoughts on that? do you. i didn't quite hear the first part of it. say it again. i think i'll ask. okay. sorry. like rob says that she thought maybe it was hard to tell if some men, like, saw it like a career at sea because maybe they were homosexual and they knew of it. so i was just curious like, what your thoughts on that? i don't know. we're going to talk about this. we talk about cowboys as well. who chooses, you know, a career that that putsch or miners or whatever, who chooses a career? well, maybe people choose that career purely for economic reasons, and they see the lack of, you know, men would choose that, even though they would have female companionship. and we certainly know that female women prostitute, these are going to be doing a booming business around, a lot of these. so i don't think it's fair to say oh, you know, he went to see so therefore he must have had a homosexual tendencies. but i also do think that i don't think that that only makes sense though that that it's something that if you do have homosexual tendencies, it's not that that could be an added incentive to to work in that. yeah. grace yeah. i feel like the reading kind of lended to both of those theories when they're talking about the miners because there was like some of it that was talking about how you had the boy wives who aged out would return for more contracts to continue work. and then there be another sentence. i would say they would return so that they could continue the cycle and have own boy wives. so i could see it being both possibilities. yeah. yeah. so so i, you know, i certainly don't know. and i think it really depended on the individual. i think it's both. and yeah yeah, v would be my thought. okay, so, um, we do see venice is one of the first place places where we men, what we would call today cruising other men. all right, you know, so we you see that? how come we don't see women doing this? i mean, certainly we that there are women who desire women sexually and if there are areas in venice and other cities where there are sort of what we would call today, a red light district, you know, where we know this is going on. why don't we see why don't we see women cruising for other women. i feel like. woman, let lives and stuck in the same place. so it's not really the who are traveling around and going to port cities and looking sexual partners. exactly if they live in those in those port cities. a lady does not go out. it's just not done. so, you know, we have some guy from diaries letters. we know that you know, there is you know what we would call lesbian activity going on today we don't see that even in sort of, you know, early centers. we see men cruising for it. so it's much more, as charlotte says, women are much more sort of secluded and they don't have the same the sort of opportunity. okay. so but rob says this and, we're going to come back to this later. but i just want to introduce it now when we see how we're doing here. oh, perfect. okay. since women did not have the same possibility for meeting in public places, it is not surprising that most of the evidence we have comes from cases in which women secretly the gender divide, successfully living men and marrying women. so usually we find about these couples and there's not a gazillion of them at this time. there's a small sample. it's usually at death all right. so somebody that the whole neighborhood is assumed has been the man in this marriage dies. and the coroner comes. it's like, oh, you know, surprise is, you know, this is a woman. so it's like, okay, we do have evidence of these of couples. can we say fully assume that both the women involved in this one passing as the man and one were living as the woman can we safely assume that they're both lesbians. matter? why not you're shaking your head. oh, i mean, just because, like, you never know, like someone's gender identity as well. like maybe they did want to live, like man. and if they were able to get away with it, that's what they. and you also don't know what their partner if their partner was completely aware of it either. right. so why why would you why would you choose to live as a even if you did not sexually desire a woman, why would you live in this? set it up as a why would you do that if you weren't sexually desirous economic opportunity and a lot more freedom and power to do what you want exactly. so it's like, okay, i don't think that, you know, whether it is solely for the economics, social freedom, that male dress and employment provided, why their sexual motivation figured into their decisions whether they conceive themselves as transgender people may never know. so i again, it's what we've talked about over and over again. you just can't make assumptions based on our knowledge. our knowledge today. later on, we're going to talk more about these past women passing as men in these these couple. so you'll read another thing about that as we move forward. okay. so. now for the for the really the heart of the matter here today, we're going to be talking about that god behar article and so and god behar starts off with some stuff that i think really kind of threw me the first time i read it so i want to unpack it with you. this is at the at the very beginning and it's i found it a little convoluted. all right. this essay explores sodomy as a sexual category and as a sexual issue in new england in seeking to understand sodomy and its place in the sexual culture of the northern colonies. i make two assumptions that underlie recent theoretical historical scholarship. first, sex as a physical must be distinguished from sexuality. the conceptual apparatus that men and women use to give meaning and value to sexual attraction. and it's. now, this is the part that struggle with people never simply sex at some of consciousness. they interpret their behavior in terms of their own and their cultures, attitudes, sex, sexual are thus always scripted. that really threw me. what does mean? sexual acts always scripted. yeah. like the religious aspect. so in a lot of our previous readings, i talked about how like having sex was also a part of like rituals in certain communities. i think specifically i remember and some of the native american tribes like they had journals from explorers talking about their religious traditions. okay. that so there's a really ageless component to this. what else? what is this? i mean, this author, i think, would say all all of our sexual acts and lives are scripted. it's not like you're following a movie script. but, yes, there's a religious component. what else? where do we get these ideas? i think it also has to do with it's power play, right. so like what we've been reading has described, at least in the past, this idea of like a past of partner, like a passive male, right and so at least my interpretation of it was sexual acts being scripted is that there's a role that the dominant and the submissive have to play. and you have to stay in those roles to maintain this power dynamic. right. and where this come from, some of it comes from religious. exactly. right. some of it comes from religious. and the notion of, you know, you you know, reproductions of a -- to wait and forget about the colonies. where do we get these ideas today before you've ever sex? where you get your ideas about it. mm hmm. just like the part about. yeah. what's taught about it? what movies you saw, what books you read. so. so the idea is, you know, that this is always kind of culturally created. i think that's one of the things that's so exciting about, you know, recent that the whole sort of queer theory and so forth is, is trying to challenge a lot of those traditional scripts. so that's his first point. so it's one that word script really kind of kind of threw me. but think he means that, you know, this isn't something which it just comes naturally. what does it really when you've been learning about it in talking about it, you know, seeing it in reading about it and so forth. so there are there are all kinds of preconceived notions, so forth going on. then the other part, second. the meanings ascribed to sex vary from one culture to another. okay, we're pretty clear on that. and we've already talked about this from one place to another and from one time to another as we saw, even in the same the same place, it could depend change a lot depending on economics. and then it says. so we need to jettison our own notions of, sexuality in favor of the categories that the people that we're studying would use. i think that's fair. indeed, we cannot that sexuality or even desire functions as an independent agent. all versions of human subjectivity, sex requires meaning in many cultures only as a function of political. here we go again. economic, social and religious ideologies. so we're all clear on this. you know, i kind of felt like this muddied the waters more than it really clarifies. but once i got into it, i thought it made more sense. all right. so so. so since we know that these early colonists say, what about sodomy? what is their view? how do describe it? what is it, anna? they say it's a sin and what? not an identity. and it can like the sin can grab hold of anyone like anyone susceptible. right. is this it's not just this. this, though. these people, it's this sin that you know, that that can take hold and what kind of a sin is it? is it one of those social sins? it's right up there at the top of the hit parade. and do we know it's the most terrible sin, worthy that it's worthy of death? yeah, it is a capital crime. so that's pretty you know, that that's pretty that's pretty clear. with that in mind you and i know and we know not just because we think this is true but we know from letters and diaries and other things that are going at the same sex sexuality is going on. they wouldn't evade this law if it wasn't going on. it's going on. they're they're literally death on it and so forth. how many people are exit quoted in colonial new england for on the charge of crime, of sodomy? do you remember what i like to or like a very low number to two. that's what that's what rough reports how. how can we understand that if this aside? so here's what i'm driving at. this is why i think history is so important, because you could say, look, the early colonists are absolutely vehement on same sex sexuality. they are absolutely against it. they're clear. their values are clear. it's a death. and that's you know, we've done our research and that's what we need to that's what we need to know. this is why i think it's so important to go the next step. okay. well, what's really going on in these in these in these communities? so so wouldn't you think that there'd be a lot more. oh, i was going. oh, go ahead. yeah. because same relations were such a sin focus and an act focused idea. it meant that when people raised concerns to the court about someone engaging in that it was, you know, oh, just give me a little bit of time. i'm going to go to god. watch these sins away, and then i can be back to to this normal that they're proposing of this heterosexuality, as opposed to it being identity focused and sort of making it us and them. and so i think so few people actually got convicted and were put to death on a capital crime because they could do it a way as it just being a slip up of a just be right getting taken away by this sin. i think your distinction the ax versus an identity is really what you see in the richard. i mentioned that they actually have to have to witnesses who i wish was surprising because it's like especially in these cases when they're talking about possible assault. it's very unlikely that anybody else is going to have seen it. so it almost seemed like they were working against themselves. yes. the two eyewitnesses who are going to commit this crime in front of two eyewitnesses. i mean, you're you're right. that's a real red flag there. so how you know, how can we understand that? and you could say. well, okay. on the one hand, this sounds kind, pretty extreme. you know, the death penalty. but on the other hand, yeah, this all this kind of kind of undermines it. so let's let's we have to really think about these people within, the context of their times. what are the issues here? is we see with almost all colonial crime, the punishment tends to either be death or kind of a slap on the wrist. we're going to put you in the public stocks. right. and humiliate you or want you to pay a fine or or you don't have to pay a fine now. but if you ever this again, you're going to have to you're to have to pay a fine. so we don't hear a lot about oh, we'll throw them in prison for 20 years. why not? prison is is very the big the big issue that they need for people in the colonies to be doing the work and so throwing them prison like you have to provide for the prisoners is just another burden. so you might as well have them out there working to provide for the community instead of providing for them. exactly. i mean, to build a prison takes all kinds money, then you have to staff it, then you have to people doing all this kind of stuff, it's like, look, this is the 1600s. we're just trying to get through each winter alive. all right? we don't we don't have the infrastructure for that. our big goal is we're trying to survive out here on the frontier and and to thrive and make profit. so, yeah, yeah. we're not that not that, not that concerned about it. so, yes, we're really upset with you. we're going to put you in the public square and have everybody know that you're being humiliated. but we're not going to you know, we don't have this whole big prison system. and i think that this is on there were sometimes there were whippings in other some other punishments. but so basically, if you're if you're either sort of yearning to let people go or execute, i think that this helps to the question of, you know, you have to have two witnesses if you're going to go executing people at a time where you need every of hands when you are really trying to sort of eke out survival in the wilderness, you better be pretty -- sure. so i think that that does help. otherwise it doesn't any sense. no, it's a you the stench and the nozzles of the law. this is a terrible, terrible thing. but until we really have absolute proof and two witnesses, we're not we're we're not going to go there. so the other. question so so basically the way i see it is it's more sort of an issue. practicality over moral or religious absolutes. yeah, it all these these people who were engaging in same sex acts that they were of a certain status and therefore they had this privilege not be punished the same way that someone if it was the opposite. right exactly. so if we have somebody who. yeah. who's a really a mover and shaker in the community and this is in providing employment. and so yeah, we, we will tend much more to look the other way in that in, that regard. so let me ask you this. i also thought this was interesting. what sodomy, according to these people and in most of today, sodomy, we think is -- sex. all right. what what's what's sodomy sure they define it as non reproductive acts. that was therefore unnatural. yeah, non reproductive. so that could be women with women. that could be oral sex, it can be all kinds of things. so i thought this was interesting that there are these different definitions. so this is i think it's on your page 53 in the godfather or i'm looking on the wrong thing, aren't i? 96 on my deal. yeah. this is so interesting throughout the 17th century, ministers were quite unequivocal. their definition of sodomy as sex between men or sex between women. this is what ministers saying ministers did not discuss the possibility that -- sex between a man and a woman or non reproductive sex might constitute sodomy for them it's more, you know, same sex, same sex relations. they focus the violation of the boundaries, the sexes, not penetration in or non reproduction the word for head for them a distinct meaning even though the phenomena on which it referred to should they insisted be understood in tandem with not in isolation from others. new england laws against sodomy generally follow that clerical example, and defining the crime is an act that involved quote parties of the same sex but new haven. there are 1655 law of differed and it's much more detailed which i think is really interesting but it's much more detailed what does that tell you? there's a lot of variation of it happening. they're finding more and more are going on. i know this is a little corny but reminded me my kids went to saint francis high school in mountain view and. when we first started, there was a dress code and it was a few pages and it got longer and longer and longer because they're finding people are finding different ways around this. and so forth. so we had the same kind of thing. oh my god. there's you know, it's not just this is this same sex activity. so i think that that's that's interesting as well. the sexual acts encompassed by the new haven law had to characteristics each was non procreative this of gets what you were talking about elena tending to the destruction of the race mankind and again this matters these are people saying no want you to have big families lots of people we got to get this is this is a going concern. this affects the the whole community. so so the new code viewed sodomy is a range of acts frustrated reproduction not simply an unclean between members of the same sex. okay. so let's talk about nicholas ascension and what do you know about this guy? so this is the trial from 1677. what do we know about nicholas nicholas? yeah. mm hmm. yeah. status and like power. he was a high ranking person, so. yeah, he had his status. his power? is he married a woman? yes. all right. he has high standing in the in the community. what do we know about his sexual activities then? they were well known. one of the things that i have written down in my notes is that he had complaints against him over the course of 30 years, 30 years, 30 years. this guy has been has been. and it's not like once in a blue moon. he decides how often is is he does he seem from what we can fairly often. yeah. well the complaints themselves were few and far between. it sounds like there were people who are like people in the colonies that were saying like, oh yeah, he tried to have sex with me. yeah. and he tried to have sex, this guy. and we all know we knows this about about this guy. so. and he arrogant about it. what's his attitude? do you remember this? mm. it seemed like he was ashamed. there was one eyewitness that after doing what he had done, went it. he went to a separate room and was, like, praying god forgive him. so it seemed like he shame about it, but his behavior didn't change. no, his behavior does not change. like you say, over 30 years we have this this going on. i mean, i think that is pretty remarkable. and again, this is you don't just say, oh, the colonists were against this and they were, you know, death on on same sex sexuality every. body seems to know this guy's proclivities. and if you go online i have such a hard can't read this stuff but some some people sort of translated it into into english and there's there's really all of interesting transcripts there and so forth. why is this community so tolerant? they know that this man has been pestering men who don't desire same sex. he's been pestering child adolescents. he'd been going after boys. why so tolerant? great. this is something that i've kept in my notes from the very end of the reading that what was most important to like the greater community of people maintaining a social integrity and like a reputation that these early colonies that they were doing well this whole social experiment of sorts was and so the common people, the people that were not a part of these higher official courts were okay turning a blind eye because they cared more about how they were collected doing. right. so like, look, we're, we're, we're hanging on as a community. so why do they finally go after then? why did they finally prosecute. if you want to keep this hush hush, i believe it was like one of his one of the men that he was sleeping with quite a bit, one of his main servants passed away. so the rate at which he was pursuing other people increased to a point where i guess just, oh, yeah, nathaniel pond. here we go. yeah, yeah. good. yeah, yeah. and and it really supports what said it's like, oh, now this is starting to hurt the community. all right, it's we're starting get a reputation everybody knows about this guy he's getting sort of more aggressive. and if we do something, then it is going to hurt our reputation. so, yes, we really do. we really do have to have act. i think it also one of the things that retarded the prosecution is that very often he was after the servant class and this is a very status you know status aware society and then there was less let less concerned about that but. let's see here. oh yeah. i this is all this is the testimony of of nicholas farber and. do you remember this? the nicholas barber testimony? do you remember what was the key? do you remember what do you remember about it? um, barber described how he knew that cintron pursued other men in the past and was uncomfortable sharing a bed with them. yeah, and then during the night, he described how cintron tried to have sex with him and then he refused after that to sleep in the same bed as him, and eventually testified against wright. and he does eventually test is he is he scolding his testimony? is he outraged by what happened this is? this is the. you're exactly right. this is what i was driving at. so everything you said is correct. the court depositions are remarkable for. their lack of hostility to the accused say of in regard to his sexual behavior. so again it says that ideas we don't like these same sex acts but we don't think he's a home sexual he's not a gay man. he's just a man who does these. that's his it's their acts, not identities. so so ascension's evident attraction to men did not undermine the general esteem in which he was held. thomas barber who like sean said you know this had really who was sanctioned had tried to sodomized in hartford declared that he was much beholden to the accused for entertain men in his house and therefore was troubled that he should any instrument to testify him in the least measure close quote. this guy tries to sodomized him a bunch of times. he's like, i'm really sorry, i'm testifying against you. you're a great i just don't want to have sex with you. okay? so there's not like, oh, an aggressive you homophobe, you know, a homosexual. he's an aggressive pedophile. those are just things that that that that he does. and as god bear says similar feelings on the part of other windsor windsor citizens may have long delayed proceedings against him. and then the last quote here i want to read to you, legal prosecution became possible only when the social disruption brought about by sanctions seemed to outweigh his worth as a citizen. so, you know, this is a very i think it to me, it was a surprising picture. okay. what about that, steven gorton? what we know about him, what was his job. you remember what he does for a living. and although it shrunk over time, kept for the most part quiet until it to become a problem for them reputation wise. exactly. so it's like his sounds like his congregation knows that he likes to have sex with men. they wish he wouldn't do that. but they don't. they don't take any kind of action until it's becoming, like you say, embarrassing for for the congregation. when he finally is caught and he repents his church him back into leadership by a two thirds majority. i i think that is really telling it's like no one's denying it. everybody ignores it. again, those are just acts. he's repented. he's a great guy we will you know we will. we will we will have him back. so just one more piece. i want to add to to this before. i move on. any questions or comments about what we've what we've covered here? yeah. mm hmm. or stephen gordon, what was interesting to me, it talked the split of the vote between and woman. so in church, women were able to vote it very much depended on which church we're talking about. but in this one. yes, yeah, yeah. mm hm. um, i think it's interesting. like how mother? well, they kind of, like, tolerate it. sodomy or like homosexual relations. and you needed all this evidence and, like, it was kind of a blind eye. but wasn't this the same period where, like, women were being prosecuted? witches? well, yeah, that's actually a little later, 1690s. but i was just going to it's kind of funny just because you're like, you know, would be like, oh, my neighbor's a witch. she does this. there's not really any. they get burned at the stake, but yet these men who are committing like rape or on consensual sex, especially with children, but with minors, i think the big difference is that, you know, the salem witch trials that we did in that women's history class, remember, that's in the 6090s, things are prosperous, they're more stable i think it's particularly important that we understand, you know, that we're talking this early period because i think that's really key it's sort of the economics stability function, you know, and stability and functioning of of the colony kind of supersedes everything else. and remember because remember those early witches, they kind of got the slap on the wrist early on and then they come back later. so i think timing is really key. it's not like a sex, like sex thing. it's just kind of, oh i think there's plenty of sexism to go around. i guess it's mainly like an economic maker, like, yeah, that, that, that. and i really think that the witch trial argument kind of reinforces that as well because again, we saw those are some of the witches who had been just been sort of getting a slap on the wrist. just go cooperate, be a good member of, the community. then once things settle. the 1690s, then that's when when that occurs. so i'm really glad you raised that point. oh, yes. oh, i just also wanted to point out that the article also mentions there are only two occasions in women had to appear before new england courts on charges of unclean behavior with one another. so i was just wondering like your thoughts on on that. well i just i think that i think it gets back to charlotte's point that women are more sort secluded, that, you know, men a much greater chance of getting caught because they're outdoors out in the barns or, you know, and so forth, where women i think i have no idea how much sex women are having with other women, but they're much less likely to get caught. they're much they're, much more secluded. what would would my response does that make sense? yeah, yeah. all right. the last thing that we want to want to talk about is this really case of this thomas thomas nina hall. not a great illustration, but the best i could find. who is this person? why is this person noteworthy. i thought was really cool how they could kind of switch your sex depending on the situation in ways that would benefit them the most. right. so this is somebody who was born with sort of an was genitalia and this person's okay with that. you know, they could be how is the community to respond? yes, i. oh, they lose their minds over the of this person maybe being biologically male, maybe being biologically female and they get to the point where they like actually like have like a group of with a group women like take them we want to see into a private and like exam in their body and then they come back with like has a -- and then other people are like, mm. but does it work. yeah. yeah there's, there's just this there, you're right. they lose their -- minds, they're very, very, you know. this is really very, it reminded me very much many. well few years ago, leslie feinberg, who's known as warrior, came here and spoke santa clara to a huge crowd. so people of all sexes have the right explore femininity, masculinity and infinite variations between without criticism or ridicule. but the story he told that really stuck me is that he and his wife had just had a new grandchild and very excited about this. but a pet peeve of him that everything is still male or female, blah blah. so he said they were telling this news, a neighbor who said, oh, this is so great. is it a boy or a girl? and they said it's a wonderful, beautiful, healthy baby. but is it a or a girl? well, and, you know, they kept doing this. and finally the neighbor said, what did they name this child? and they named it like chris something. and this neighbor was losing her mind because it's like, no, it's so it was really interesting to me that, you know, this goes way, way back. no, we want to be very clear who is what, and that's all there is to it, i think, the biggest issue like maybe they were confused or they didn't understand identity part, but the biggest issue for them was what is considered a homosexual act? yes and yes. what the legal actions would be then. right. we want these very definitions of what this means. yeah. okay. so so all right, uh, let me see, let me just finish this up here. okay. so what are we supposed take, take away from all of this? the upshot of all of this is that, like africans native americans, we see a variety of attitudes towards same sex, sexuality among american colonists and, as with previous other groups, a lot of it seems to be hinged economics. certainly religion are. the things play at play play a role as well. so let me see last thing here and i'll get you out of here. um. here we go. what? the case of nicholas mentioned and thomas. thomas hall shows that colonial attitudes towards gender and sexual transgression work shaped not only by european law, custom and religious, but also by active in the community, law, religion and everyday of ordinary people, as well as the alternative possibility for sexuality and gender embodied in native american and african sexual systems. all went into the fashioning new world sexuality. so i think this is important for its own right. it also removed that, oh, the good old days, good old days where american values when we knew you know about you know how to how to treat -- sexuality because i guess it's a much broader or more nuanced picture. i'm sorry we went a minute over thank you all very much you were great today and i appreciate it. all right. have a wonderful weekend. i'