Crimologil and cultural disurs ncerng LGBT persons as crimals are traced om the 1880s through the 1980s, when “gay crimal” gave way to the “gay victim.” The ntemporary absence of LGBT persons om crimology, except as...
Contents:
* lgbt offender *
Today the mol of the gay crimal, forced by an trsilly crimogenic same-sex sire to m atroci, has been disunted as irratnal and bigoted, a relic of the homophobic past. However, the mol of the gay victim, forced by an trsilly victimizg same-sex sire to endure hate crim, asslts, and sundry jtic, requirg the paternal terventn of heterosexual big brothers, is still alive and well, and rms much of ntemporary scholarship and popular disurse.
This chapter will trace the history of the gay crimal and the gay victim, and suggt a third mol, of LGBT persons as potential cizens and potential First Gay CrimalsPrr to the neteenth century, there were few gay crimals, bee, as many scholars have argued, there was ltle ncept of a separate LGBT inty. In Colonial North Ameri, people nvicted of sodomy were punished and then re-troduced to society, as if they had mted theft or secrated the Sabbath, certaly not as if they were nately crimal (Katz 2007) cintally, sentialist disurs ncerng the “homosexual” and “the crimal” arose at the same moment of history, durg middle years of the neteenth century, rponse to the same polil and cultural forc, such as the ratnalizatn of dtry and the anonymy of urban life (see this volume, Ball; Woods). Siarly, Moran (1998) analyz the notor 1895 trial of playwright Osr Wil through nflictg attempts to name what precisely was beg tried: a crimal act (“gross cency”) or a crimal the first of the twentieth century, there was ltle public fear of verts (soon renamed “homosexuals”).
Few articl on “the problem of homosexualy” appeared the scholarly journals of Bra, the Uned Stat, or Germany through the 1920s. There were thrivg gay and lbian muni Hollywood and Harlem, Paris and Berl, wh night spots, private parti, open exprsns of romantic tert, open homoromantic unns (Miller 1995) the mors of war brought the era of the “harmls eccentric” to a close.