Life for us can be deadly in other countries. It you have to get a connecting flight in Qatar or Saudi Arabia beware.
In the past we hung gays and lesbians here in Connecticut.
In the past we hung gays and lesbians here in Connecticut.
Unequal Justice for the Gay Puritans of New Haven ColonyOthers were luckier they were not hanged…
New England Historical Society
Gay Puritans in 17th century New Haven Colony were better off with money than without. Without wealth or social standing, they could go to the gallows for the crime of sodomy.
New Haven hanged three gay Puritans of low social status between 1646 and 1655. But a well-known gay Puritan escaped capital punishment because of his wealth and social standing.
The three gay Puritans were the only ones executed for sodomy in New England, according to historian Lawrence Goodheart.
GAY PURITANS IN NEW HAVEN
Puritans established New Haven Colony as a moral community that followed Biblical law. Sometimes that meant harsh punishment and unequal justice. Exposing sexual harassment got you whipped and disagreeing with a minister got you hauled into court.
Committing sodomy got you hanged.
The New Haven Puritans made ‘Sodomiticall filthinesse’ a capital crime, defining it as ‘carnal knowledge of another vessel than God in nature hath appointed to become one flesh.'
The last of the gay Puritans to die on the gallows was John Knight. He had engaged in 'filthyness in a sodomatical way' with 14-year-old Peter Vinson and Mary Clark. Vinson and Clark received whippings for concealing evidence, and Knight died on the gallows in 1655. Puritan officials concluded he was ‘not fit to live among men.’In Massachusetts they also hanged gays and they also branded people…
The last of the gay Puritans to die on the gallows was John Knight. He had engaged in 'filthyness in a sodomatical way' with 14-year-old Peter Vinson and Mary Clark. Vinson and Clark received whippings for concealing evidence, and Knight died on the gallows in 1655. Puritan officials concluded he was ‘not fit to live among men.’Others were luckier they were not hanged…
In contrast, Plymouth Colony to the north only whipped gay Puritans for sodomy. According to records, in 1637,By the 18th Century we became a little more civilized. There are reports of trans people in Boston, in famous case where John Quincy Adams was a lawyer in a case of assault of a trans person, you can read about it here on my blog.
John Alexander & Thomas Roberts were both examined and found guilty of lewd behavior and unclean carriage one with another, by often spending their seed one upon another, which was proved both by witnesses & their own confession.
The court sentenced Alexander to a severe whipping, branding on the shoulder and banishment. Roberts, a servant, also received a severe whipping, but he returned to his master.
Here is another case:
ReplyDelete"a monster in human shape"
The New Haven Colony court executed William Plaine (or Plane), one of the original settlers of the town of Guilford.(1)
Background
In 1639, Plaine had been a signer of the Covenant in which the first Guilford settlers, while still aboard ship bound for New England, promised, "the Lord assisting," to be helpful to each other "in every common work, according to every man's ability and as need shall require." They had also promised "not to desert ... each other," without the consent of the majority of the signers. The organization and membership of the church was left until actual settlement. Plaine was assigned a home lot of two acres, and, in 1645, was appointed by the Town Council to build the dam for the Town Mill, and to inspect chimneys as a fire precaution-responsibilities suggesting he was a trusted resident of Guilford.
But the following year various charges were brought against him.
The Charges
According to John Winthrop, the charges were that Plaine, though "a married man ... had committed sodomy with two persons in England," and "had corrupted a great part of the youth of Guilford by masturbations ... above a hundred times." When asked about such "filthy practice," Plaine "did insinuate seeds of atheism, questioning whether there was a God."
The Punishment
Winthrop reported in his journal that Governor Eaton of the New Haven Colony had written to the governor of the Massachusetts Colony seeking the magistrates' and church elders' advice about Plaine's punishment. All agreed that he "ought to die," giving different reasons "from the word of God." Winthrop added: "indeed it was horrendum facinus [a dreadful crime], and he a monster in human shape ... , and it tended to the frustrating of the ordinance of marriage and the hindering the generation of mankind." Winthrop's reasons for considering Plaine's activities so wicked, their alleged anti-marriage, anti-procreative effects, summarized two main Puritan objections to sodomy.
Plaine's alleged "questioning whether there was a God," and his unrepentant sexual activity, suggests an active defiance of basic Puritan beliefs and laws.
References
Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (NY: Harper & Row, 1983), pp.90-91, citing: Winthrop,History, vol. 2, p. 324. Winthrop gives the year of Plaine's execution as 1646; Smith (below) says it was "about 1648." Also see Bernard Christian Steiner, A History of the Plantation of Menukatuck, and of the Original Town of Guilford, Connecticut (Baltimore: Steiner, 1897), pp. 25, 45, 53, 86, 227, 260; Ralph D. Smith, 'The History of Guilford, Connecticut from its First Settlement in 1636. From the Manuscripts (Albany: J. Munsell, 1817), pp. 11-12, 15.
? Who got the money? Who got the land? Who got the house and who got the wife? Something smelled rather rotten in all of this when we researched William Plaine years ago. A look at the map of Guilford from back then holds some answers to this.