Sympathetic Ink: Identity, Activism, and the 1820s Attempt to Reform the British Sodomy Laws

CLAGS Visiting Scholar Charles Upchurch offers the first account of a forgotten attempt to reform Britain’s sodomy laws in the 1820s. At the center of these events was a small group of men in Parliament who explicitly wrote that their same-sex feelings were inborn, Upchurch situates their identities in their particular time, place, and historical context, showing how these men based their political activism to end the death penalty for sodomy on this self-understanding.