The term Homophobia
is less than one hundred years old.[1] Before that, distaste for homosexual behavior was cloaked within the vernacular of Early Modern England,
especially 17th century London
, by terms such as "buggery" and "sodomy." By the early 18th century, men who exclusively had sex with men were deemed "he-whores."[2] Francis Bacon
, the father of the scientific method and very much a man ahead of his time in many ways, nevertheless shows that he believed "masculine love" to be an "unlawful threat" in The New Atlantis
(written in 1610-14 and published in 1623). In other words, this inspiring hero of the Royal Society would keep anything feminine, or effeminate, at arm's length.
is less than one hundred years old.[1] Before that, distaste for homosexual behavior was cloaked within the vernacular of Early Modern England, especially 17th century London, by terms such as "buggery" and "sodomy." By the early 18th century, men who exclusively had sex with men were deemed "he-whores."[2] Francis Bacon, the father of the scientific method and very much a man ahead of his time in many ways, nevertheless shows that he believed "masculine love" to be an "unlawful threat" in The New Atlantis (written in 1610-14 and published in 1623). In other words, this inspiring hero of the Royal Society would keep anything feminine, or effeminate, at arm's length.His written protestations against homosexuality were not evident in his real life, however. Despite the fact that his public career ended in disgrace in 1621,[3] Bacon's writings went on to influence the Royal Society and their expansion of the scientific method into an experimental philosophy that is still practiced today in modern medicine around the world. In 1667, forty-one years after Bacon, the founder of the scientific method and the English essay, was eulogized by one of his apprentices who claimed that his "bounty transcends a father's natural love"[4], Thomas Sprat, a historian of the Royal Society, would credit Bacon and his "noble labours in that philosophy by a vast treasure of admirable imaginations" as someone of "new philosophy" greater than that of the Greeks.[5]
