Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplify'd

"That’s right. It was originally published, advertised and available in bookshops but then when the authorities turned against it, it was suppressed so thoroughly that no printed copy had ever been found. But I found, in the archive of the Public Records Office a few years ago, the public indictment against Thomas Cannon for having written it – which happily transcribes the entire pamphlet to show why it was quite so dangerous and should be suppressed. So we have it in manuscript. I wanted to include it because another theme of my book is the way in which the first sexual revolution is also a moment of great change, both good and bad, in terms of attitudes to same-sex behaviour. It’s the point at which the persecution of homosexuals became much more intense – because as people started to think that what is sexually natural should be allowed, it sharpened their focus on where the limits of what is natural were. That lead to increasing persecution against what was supposedly unnatural, and most people said that sex between two men was unnatural. Exactly. The other point about the first sexual revolution is that people also started to argue for the toleration of homosexual behaviour in private, on exactly the same grounds on which they argued for heterosexual behaviour. Thomas Cannon is the bravest example of that. I think it will surprise most people that the first public defence of gay rights occurred so early. You can trace from that everything that came afterwards, through the 19th century and Oscar Wilde down to [the] Stonewall [riots of 1969 in New York] and the arguments for same-sex relations that we now take for granted. It’s interesting that this was published in 1749, the same year as the publication of John Cleland’s Fanny Hill , the first pornographic work written in English. Cleland and Cannon actually knew each other, and fell out over something quite obscure. I think it is a rather nice parallel that in the same year were published both this pioneering work on gay rights and perhaps the greatest celebration of heterosexual pleasure of the 18th century."