Sodomy, Possessive Individualism, and Godless Nature: Eighteenth-Century Traces of Homosexual Assertiveness

I n 1809 t h I r t y e I g h t y e a r o l d ship’s surgeon James Nehemiah Taylor was caught in the act of sodomy with his helper on a naval vessel at sea. After being court-martialed in the port of Portsmouth, the doctor was sentenced to death. During the two weeks before the execution, the marine chaplain tried to sway him to repentance by, for instance, organizing a church service, attended by the crew and the convicted man, which centered the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. This did not keep Taylor from presenting to the chaplain an image of God that differed slightly from the wrathful supreme being who set these cities ablaze. Taylor, a well-read man who was familiar with Voltaire and other “infidel authors,” did not consider himself a sinner. He believed in God as creator, but in his view, God did not run the world in inscrutable and punishing ways. God was merciful and understanding of human frailties, especially when these “were implanted in our nature and constitution.”1 That Taylor frequently had given way to his irresistible urges did not, he stressed, detract from his moral righteousness—and this, after all, served as the base for community spirit and responsible handling of civil rights and freedom of religion. Taylor trusted that God, in the last judgment, would take into