List of people executed for homosexuality

Societal attitudes towards same-sex relationships have varied over time and place, from expecting all males to engage in same-sex relationships, to casual integration, through acceptance, to seeing the practice as a minor sin, repressing it through law enforcement and judicial mechanisms, and to proscribing it under penalty of death. The following individuals received the death penalty for it.

Executed individuals

• John de Wettre (1292), a "maker of small knives", condemned at Ghent and burned at the pillory next to St. Peter's^[1]
• Giovanni di Giovanni (1350 – 1365), 15-year-old Italian boy charged with being "a public and notorious passive sodomite"^[2][3]
• Margarida Borràs (d. 1460), Spanish cross dressing transsexual.
• Katherina Hetzeldorfer (d. 1477), German cross dressing lesbian executed for heresy against nature after having used a dildo on two female partners.
• Jacopo Bonfadio (c1508 – 1550), Italian humanist and historian^[4]
• Francesco Calcagno (1528 – 1550), Venetian Franciscan friar.^[5]
• Dominique Phinot (c1510 – c1556), French composer of the Renaissance^[6]
• Mervyn Tuchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven (1593 – 1631), tried and executed for committing sodomy with male servants and procuring the rape of his wife^[7]
• John Atherton (1598 – 1640), Bishop of Waterford and Lismore^[8]
• Lisbetha Olsdotter (died 1679), Swedish cross-dresser and early female soldier (disguised as a man).
• Ensign James Hepburn, 25, and Thomas White, 16, hanged in front of Newgate Prison, London, March 7, 1811, for sodomy ^[9]
• James Pratt and John Smith, two London men who became the last two to be hanged for sodomy in England, in November 1835

See also

• Criminalization of homosexuality in majority-Muslim countries
• Homosexuality
• Homosexuality in society
• List of executed people
• Violence against LGBT people

References

1. Louis Crompton (1981). Salvatore J. Licata, Robert P. Petersen, ed. Historical Perspectives on Homosexuality. The Haworth Press. p. 17. ISBN 9780917724275.
2. Rocke, Michael (1996). Forbidden Friendships, Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence. Oxford University Press. pp. 24, 227, 356, 360. ISBN 0-19-512292-5.
3. Meyer, Michael J (2000). Literature and Homosexuality. Rodopi. p. 206. ISBN 90-420-0519-X.
4. Official website commemorating 500 years since Bonfadio's birth
5. Tucker, Scott (1997). The Queer Question: Essays on Desire and Democracy. Boston: South End Press. ISBN 978-0-89608-577-0. p. 46.
6. Jacob, Roger "Dominique Phinot", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed January 1, 2006), (subscription access)
7. Herrup, Cynthia B. (1999). A House in Gross Disorder: Sex, Law, and the 2nd Earl of Castlehaven. Oxford University Press.
8. Norris, David (2009-05-17). "Changing Attitudes". Public Address at the service to mark international day against homophobia in Christ Church Cathedral. David Norris. Retrieved 2009-11-29.
9. Davenport, Guy (2003), "Wos Es War, Soll Ich Werden" in The Death of Picasso, Shoemaker & Hoard, Washington, D.C., p. 334.

External links

• Claude Courouve, Procès de sodomie en France, (1307-1783). (In French)
• Anonymous (Dale Sheldon), LGBT victims, 1291-2012, "Gay History Wiki".
• Stefano Bolognini & Giovanni Dall'Orto, List of executions for sodomy in Italy (1293-1782) (in Italian), "WikiPink".