Silence and Sodomy: The Creation of Homosexual Identity in Law
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.00132 |
| Published date | 01 January 1998 |
| Date | 01 January 1998 |
| Author | Peter Bartlett |
REVIEW ARTICLE
Silence and Sodomy: The Creation of Homosexual
Identity in Law
Peter Bartlett*
Leslie J. Moran,The Homosexual(ity) of Law, London: Routledge, 1996. viii +
248 pp, hb £50.00, pb £16.99.
This book just might be definitive. I do not mean that it presents an exhaustive
account of the characterisation of sexual activity between men in English criminal
law. It does not. While Moran’s account is innovative and wide-ranging, I was
never left with the feeling that the book contained all that needed to be said. I mean
it instead in the sense that Moran successfully draws a variety of post-modern
discourses surrounding law and sexuality into one place, providing a point of
reference for future debate. The value of this work will thus be gauged in terms of
the discussion it facilitates, not the discussion it forecloses.
My interest is thus in the spaces Moran creates, not just the spaces he occupies.
As that will sometimes involve drawing connections which Moran does not focus
on, the risk is that I will be perceived as not liking the book. Not true; I liked the
book a lot.
Moran’s interest is in the way the law has characterised sexual relations between
men, and those who engage in those relations. By tracing the discourses and
practices of courts, police and legislation, he provides an account of the entry of
homosexuality into law in the twentieth century. For Moran, this is a new
articulation for law, distinct from the buggery, sodomy and unnatural offences of
previous generations. Moran’s work is novel because of his use of law not merely
as reflective of similar developments in society, but as a discourse with its own
logic, creating the figure of the homosexual.
Moran acknowledges up front his debt to Foucault (pp 10–12), and the work
bears some of the strengths and weaknesses of that heritage. The arguments can be
complex, and I would not recommend the book to those not up to reasonably
sophisticated post-modern language and debate. With that caveat, the language is
often playful, and Moran has a gift for the telling or paradoxical image. As with
Foucault, the style is descriptive. There are not ‘arguments’ with ‘conclusions’ in
the conventional legal sense. Ideas and images come thick and fast, creating a
picture or providing an account of the situation in which we now find ourselves.
The result is that the overall picture is dependent on the evidence as a whole, and
flaws in particular data need to be assessed in the context of the general project. This
is a particular caveat for historians. The first four chapters of the book trace the
development of buggery and homosexual offences in English criminal law since the
The Modern Law Review Limited 1998 (MLR 61:1, January). Published by Blackwell Publishers,
108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
102
* Department of Law, University of Nottingham.
My thanks to Simon Corcoran, David Ormerod, Carl Stychin, and Alan Yoshioka for perusing a draft of
this article. Their comments referred to style, and my own thoughts; the view of Moran’s work is entirely
my own.
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