Homosexuality

• Bentham wrote the earliest known argument against the criminalisation of homosexual acts
• 'Offences against one's self' - 1785 


  • contended that sex was a legitimate pleasure in its own right
• 1785 essay - 'Paederasty (offences against one's self)

  argued for the liberalisation of laws prohibiting homosexual acts
• why did Paedersasty remain unpublished during his lifetime?

  fear of offending public morality
• Some of Bentham's writings on homosexuality published in 1931
• When was Paederasty finally published?

  1978
• How does Bentham describe homosexual acts?

  'irregularities of the venereal appetite'