This week on the Lectures and History podcast, a discussion about gays and lesbians in colonial America,

Santa Clara University professor Nancy Unger describes the religious, political, and economic impacts of homosexuality, and how these colonial societies reacted.

Today, we're going to be concluding our discussion of African homosexuality,

and then we're going to move into, so we will have talked about pre-Columbian Native American same-sex sexuality. We're going to work through

African same-sex sexuality, and then we're going to start talking about those white colonists,

as in the article that you all read, sodomy in colonial New England. So just a little review, you know,

why do pre-colonial African same-sex sex sex acts even matter in 2003? What's the point of even

understanding that? Then we'll move on to why would owners tolerate same-sex relations among enslaved peoples?

Wouldn't they want them to be heterosexual and breeding?

We'll talk about attitudes in modern Africa.

I'm sorry, in modern Africa.

Then, was there same-sex sexuality among whites and colonial New England?

Well, yeah, sure there was. But what evidence do we have? And why is that significant? What does it, what does it matter?

We'll talk about sodomy at sea. What does it mean to be in a same-sex environment?

And how is that notions of same-sex sexuality there

different than in a more conventional society? So we'll talk about pirates and sailors and so

forth, the rise of the Italian vice. And if the colonists conclude that sodomy is so bad,

and it's a capital offense, and we know

what's going on, why is it so rarely prosecuted?

How does that make sense to us?

And we'll talk specifically about the cases of Nicholas Sension, we'll talk fair amount

about him, Stephen

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