homosexuality.

[wildwood]

I want to become more tolerant to gay's private lives. Can you help?

We have over the years become fairly friendly with a gay male couple who used to live next door, they make us laugh and are such a caring pair. We also have a gay niece so we are no strangers to it.

I am well aware that homosexuality is first and foremost an attraction to the same sex for companionship and comfort. Eventually though, it comes to sexual activity which is where my understanding falls down.

Although I don't make a song'n'dance about it, I honestly can't accept what a male couple get up to in the bedroom is normal. With females it seems to me to be different because of a lack of certain body parts!

I have heard all the 'live and let live' and 'none of your business' stuff but my discomfort with my feeling over this worry me somewhat.

Could we please not have any name calling or nasty remarks as this is how I feel and am baring my soul, hoping I can learn to understand better.

[plautus]

I am no expert here on on aspect, namely sodomy, but I do lay claim to knowing a little about the law. Sodomy (the legal term being buggery) was always an illegal practice and punishable by death. Other forms of homosexual activity were only actually outlawed in 1885 in the Criminal Libel Act of that year, which led to the prosecution of Oscar Wilde.

[hc4361]

plautus, that is too general and vague. Buggery is not punishable at all in the UK as long as the participants (male or female) are 16 or over (17 in Northern Ireland), let alone by death.

[plautus]

You miss my point which was that until 1885 homosexuality (apart from the specific offence mentioned above) was not illegal. Lesbian acts were not made illegal simply because Queen Victoria could not believe that women got up to such things.

[hc4361]

I haven't missed your point at all, I don't understand why you are making your point.

[karenmac60]

Plautus, you statement about Queen Victoria is a myth. See here -

http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/mythbusters/353/victoria_and_the_lesbians.html

[FredPuli43]

It's true to say, as in the link above, that C19 monarchs had no power to amend legislation, in the form of bills presented to them for assent, nor could they exercise their power of veto; this still exists but has not been exercised since Queen Anne refused to agree to a bill for levying militias in Scotland, on the grounds that Scots could not be trusted to control their own !
However, it is and was always possible for the monarch to give her views at an earlier stage, in the hope that someone would agree and apply them to proposed bills.Queen Victoria took great exception to the proposed verdict in insanity cases that the accused was "Not Guilty, but insane". She was not disposed to the view that any madman who tried to kill her; and there were several in the course of her reign; were not guilty of anything! Accordingly, the verdict was made "Guilty, but insane", which it remained for many years after her death.