From Sodomy to Same-Sex Desire

Abstract

There has been little written about Scotland’s queer history, which is the result not of a lack of interest but of the difficulty in finding the necessary sources from which to chart the nation’s queer past. Although there is a relative paucity of material relating to homosexuality in Scotland prior to the nineteenth century, a variety of discussions do exist, generally related to Scots Law. These sources may not offer us much of an insight into popular attitudes to same-sex desire in Scotland’s past but they do enable an understanding of how legal authorities and prominent personalities viewed homosexual acts. What becomes apparent is that homosexuality was not viewed as a major problem in Scotland during the sixteenth to early nineteenth centuries, yet it was troublesome enough to agitate Scottish legal luminaries.