Of course, although we can find accounts of such criminal cases in court records and old newspaper archives, they only reveal LGBT ancestors who were caught breaking the law.
Before the introduction of CCTV or professional investigators, the trial came down to who the court was more likely to believe. It was easy to make a case against someone by simply testifying to have witnessed the act. When such cases came to court, usually because they were overseen by a third party, the young men always claimed they were too drunk to makeĮqually, there were numerous instances of men hauled before the courts who claimed they had been set up. There are many documented instances of gay men picking up delivery boys, taking them to a pub, giving them a pint of beer and a meal, and then fondling them and, in many cases, persuading them to have sex. These young men were happy to accept a drink and pub lunch at the expense of a friendly stranger. Also the boys were often from poor backgrounds and vulnerable, so if they made an allegation then their word would carry less weight with the police.Īs Norton explains, “The streets of London swarmed with errand boys and porters offering to carry goods and packages and delivering messages for small change. Younger boys would willingly go with an older man, especially for a small amount of money or a promise of beer.
It was easier to pick them up than risk attending a brothel or propositioning a man of the same age. According to Norton, this stems from the fact that many older men would naturally encounter errand boys on the street. In the press, there has been a long-held slur linking homosexuality to sex with underage boys. Ned Ward’s The Secret History of London Clubs (1709, and freely available in a later edition from the Internet Archive) offers an open description of these houses suggesting that they were places of intrigue where the working class, the young and the old could meet and explore their sexuality. Moorfields, Lincoln’s Inn and the Royal Exchange were other places around the capital where you could find molly houses. According to historian Rictor Norton, London’s ‘molly districts’ included the arcade of Covent Garden, the south side of St James’s Park and the bog houses (toilets) of the Savoy. Arguably, there was a significant tolerance for this gay subculture. Raids often took place based on a tip-off from neighbours who had an axe to grind or in relation to another crime it is clear that there wasn’t a concerted effort during this time to close down molly houses. While there was a chance that the houses could be raided and the penalties were severe, their locations were well known. ‘Molly’ was a derogatory term that meant either gay or feminine men. One potentially safe haven for gay men to meet in the 18th and early 19th century was ‘molly houses’.
The bawdy 18th century and early 19th century are often regarded as a high point for the acceptance of same-sex relations and what we would now call transgenderism that would be clamped down upon following 1885. Greene's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.Early morning workers jeer at a gentleman as he is being carried home after a night of dissipation, 1747 Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images Safe havens In March, she suggested she feels "threatened" by HHS official Rachel Levine, the highest-ranking openly transgender official in the US. Greene has a long history of transphobic comments and stunts, in particular the false suggestion that transgender people are replacing people assigned female at birth. She said that she "could care less what grown adults do" and that sexuality is a private matter. This sort of representation, Greene said, is "sick, it's disgusting, it's evil, and it's wrong." The show's creator Matt Fernandes said in an interview with parenting website that his intention was to "have a dialogue about the fact that families come in different shapes and sizes." She shared a brief clip of a Disney show named "Dino Ranch" in which two animated male dinosaurs gaze longingly at egg-shaped rocks and appear to want to become fathers. Greene also took aim at Disney, which has come under fire from conservatives for LGBTQ-inclusive programming in what has shaped up to be an anti-"woke" culture war. In the brief clip of Simon talking about her book, there was no mention of attempting to persuade children into gender reassignment. "This people are terrorists because they're going after the most innocent, vulnerable people in our country," she said. Greene, showing a brief clip of Simon discussing her book, used this as one basis on which to claim that "the most dangerous people in America" are those that "want to groom your children and talk them into changing their gender."