Stories of Pride 2022: Part 1 (Roman Empire through 1799)
- beereed13
- Jun 1, 2022
- 7 min read
Updated: Jun 29, 2022
June is LGBTQIA+ Pride Month in the United States. This month was chosen because it commemorates the Stonewall Uprisings which began on June 28, 1969, when a group of queer folks - led by Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Stormé DeLarverie, and other members of the QTBIPOC community - fought back against the systematic police brutality and abuse they had lived with for decades.
Today, Pride is about so much more than this one moment in time. We’ve always been here, and we always will be. Storytelling is one of the oldest and most sacred ways of preserving and advancing culture. You cannot spell history without “story.” Each Wednesday of this month I’ll be rounding up stories of LGBTQIA+ people, moments, and movements throughout history and from around the world.
This is our culture. These are our stories. And this limited series is just the tip of the iceberg. May it inspire you to seek and share even more of our robust, beautiful, challenging history as a movement, community, and culture.
The Marriage of Emperor Nero and Pythagoras (AD 64)
Most people know by now that men having sex with men was pretty common in the Roman Empire. But they, too, had their hang-ups and taboos around human sexuality. They were just different from the ones we may recognize in our own culture today. Generally, their hang-ups had much more to do with social status and misogyny than with what we would identify today as homosexuality.
While sex between men was common, actual relationships between two men were largely unheard of. So it may come as a bit of a surprise that no less than three different historians of the 1st century wrote accounts of Emperor Nero being married to a freedman by the name of Pythagoras. The historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus’ historical works talk about how Nero married Pythagoras “with all the forms of regular wedlock.” The account goes on to describe the ceremony:
The bridal veil was put over the emperor; people saw the witnesses of the ceremony, the wedding dower, the couch and the nuptial torches; everything in a word was plainly visible. (The Annals, Vol. V by Tacitus)
Captain Edward Rigby (1698)
There are many layers to the hows, whens, and whys of homophobia having a seat in legal courts, but a lot of it (for our modern Western culture) can be traced back to a period that began in the 1500s known as the Reformation. There have been volumes upon volumes of books written about the struggles for political and social power between the Catholic Church, the new Protestant Church, and European monarchs at the time. And anywhere there is a struggle for political power there are communities being scapegoated as a source of fear and blame. After all, nothing distracts and unites the masses faster than a common enemy.
That’s how The Buggery Act of 1533 was born. It’s a document in which sex between two men was included among a long list of sex acts that were deemed so immoral they could be punished by death. As the years went by, groups were formed to help enforce the Buggery Act and other purity-culture centric laws. One of the most powerful of these to emerge was the Societies for the Reformation for Manners, who would bring many men up on charges of sodomy and obscenity. One of their earliest and most well documented targets was Captain Edward Rigby.
Rigby began his career as a sea captain in 1693 aboard the Mermaid, an English fireship. In 1695 he would become the captain of a 40 gun man-of-war called the Dragon where he would serve until he was arrested in 1698 for allegedly seducing other men on his ship. During this very well documented trial, Rigby defended himself, not by denying having had sex with other men, but by arguing "it's no more than was done in our Fore-fathers time.” Also notable about the trial is the fact that two different men came forward to testify that a local clergyman had bribed them to make false charges against Rigby. The judge discounted their testimony, and Rigby would ultimately serve a prison sentence. After his release, he escaped to France where he took to the seas again, this time in battle against his homeland of England. During this time serving with the French mariners he earned a reputation as a highly skilled sailor with lavish and expensive tastes.
John Cooper, a.k.a. Princess Seraphina (1732)
One of the most common types of surviving documents providing records of queerness throughout history are court documents. Records of arrests, trials, and prison terms seem to have lasted the test of time, and it’s from these documents that we are able to see that queer people of all varieties have been living, thriving, loving, and resisting homophobia for literally centuries.
Perhaps one of the most intriguing cases from the 18th century is the court record for a trial involving John Cooper, otherwise known as “Princess Seraphina.” This drag persona from the commonly held masquerades and balls of the day was such an integral part of his identity that many people in his everyday life only knew him by the name Princess Seraphina. This court case stands out for its time because of the straightforward normalcy with which Seraphina’s lifestyle is handled. It also stands out because in this trial, Princess Seraphina isn’t the one on trial - she’s the complainant.
The trial essentially revolves around Cooper charging a man named Tom Gordon with mugging him at knife point for his clothes. According to both accounts, Cooper and Gordon ended up swapping clothes (Cooper’s very nice clothes for Gordon’s shabby ones) after a night of drinking together. By Cooper’s account, this was a mugging with a side of blackmail in which he was held at knifepoint by Gordon and threatened with being accused of sodomy if he told anyone. Gordon claims that after a failed come-on, Cooper offered to swap clothes with him as a bribe to keep him quiet. During the trial, many witnesses spoke openly and frankly about Princess Seraphina being a frequent flyer at drag balls and masquerades, working as a messenger for gay men (“mollies”) looking to hook up with one another, and how some of them never knew her by any name other than Princess or Miss. Throughout the proceedings different witnesses use male and female pronouns and names when referring to Cooper/Seraphina.
Ultimately, Gordon was acquitted of the accusation, and no charges of any kind were ever brought against Princess Seraphina, despite the openness with which her life was discussed in court.
Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplified (1749)
One of the earliest published defenses of homosexuality as a natural human experience that should be decriminalized was printed in 1749. In his book Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplified, Thomas Cannon made the argument that same-sex attraction, romance, and sex had always been a part of humanity. Although no known copies of this work in its entirety exist today, the pieces and fragments historians have been able to locate show that this document contained a wide range of material and arguments, ranging from pornographic descriptions of various types of human sexuality, passages supporting gender ambiguity, and philosophical support for same-sex relationships.
One section directly counters the argument that homosexuality is an “unnatural desire,” saying:
Unnatural Desire is a Contradiction in Terms; downright Nonsense. Desire is an amatory Impulse of the inmost human Parts: Are not they, however constructed, and consequently impelling, Nature?.... Nature sometimes assumes an unusual Appearance; But the extraordinary Pederast seeking Fruition, is as naturally acted as the ordinary Woman’s Man in that Pursuit.... Nature is Boundless, comprehending all animate, and inanimate Things.
Bunch of Grapes Raid (1792)
Between October 29 and November 3, 1792 there were no less than six different newspaper articles published in London about a raid on a public house (a privately owned home that was opened to the public as a tavern, inn, or alehouse) called Bunch of Grapes.
In October 1792 a local magistrate received an anonymous complaint that the house, owned and operated by William Field and his wife Sarah, was hosting a weekly gathering for gay men. These gatherings were said to happen every Monday night with up to 30 members at a time and lasting until 4 a.m. When the officers entered the house the night of the raid, they found two of the attendees dressed in women’s clothes performing a dance together while the other men sat around and watched them. The attendees arrested that night had aliases by which they were known at the club. The nicknames reported include: Lady Gormanston, Lady Golding, Countess Papillion, Duchess of York, Lady Mary Duncan, Miss Conveniency, Blood-Bold Nan, Miss Frisky, Betsy Dash, Moorfields Moll, Gipsy Moll, Miss Fancy, Lady Pelham, Little Cockatoo, and Miss Mary Jobson.
During the trials it was determined that there was no evidence of an actual crime having been committed. Everyone that was arrested that night was released.
*AUTHOR’S NOTE: Language around what we identify as queerness or homosexuality today has changed a lot throughout history. Nuance over labels and terms is still a hot and ever evolving topic. For the sake of telling these (hi)stories, I have utilized different terms as I saw best fit to convey the meaning and context to a general audience. If you choose to carry these stories with you to share with others (and I hope you will), please feel free to update or change these terms if and when you see fit.
I’d also like to give a shout-out to Rick Norton’s website for making such a robust collection of primary source documents of queer history available to the public for free.
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