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Antimasonic Satire, Sodomy, and
Eighteenth-Century Masculinity in the
Boston Evening-Post
Thomas A. Foster
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ON January 7, 1751, readers of the Boston Evening-Post found
a full-column poetic letter, entitled "In Defence of Masonry," occupying
half of the front page. At the top was one of the earliest engravings
accompanying a poem to appear in a newspaper. It depicted two men,
one bent over, the other penetrating him with a trunnel, or wooden
spike. Here graphic imagery with sodomitical overtones accompanied
stanzas containing phallic references and allusions to homoerotic
group activities. Sodomy was still a capital crime in eighteenth-century
Massachusetts—could symbolic sodomy have been a source of emasculating
satire?
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Early American and London Grub Street political and social attacks frequently fomented sexual scandal.2 Although sex slander and gossip were fairly common, satire that included direct smears of homosexuality or posterior-centered tropes such as enemas was rare in the colonial era, especially in the American context. Only a handful of sources suggest that sodomy was occasionally part of a satirist's arsenal of sexually charged social and political weapons in early eighteenth-century New England.3 Although scholarship on early antimasonic satire has largely overlooked its sexual dimensions, the earliest published polemics aimed at the Freemasons in Massachusetts clearly reveal the use of sodomy to stigmatize men enmeshed in public controversy.4 In Massachusetts, the association of sodomy with corruption, commerce, and foreign influence seems to have lent itself to an antimasonic satire that could cast aspersions on the Masons' masculinity. |
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The light-heartedness of the satire appearing in the Boston Evening-Post stands in stark contrast to the tone Boston ministers used in discussions of sodomy. Condemnation of same-sex sexuality remained a lesson of the oft-told tale of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire and brimstone. Nowhere was the story a source of entertainment or taken lightly by Boston's prolific sermonizers. The sins of Sodom and Gomorrah were above all sexual, and references to them often included a range of acts under the general rubric "uncleanness" that were meant to address the sinful desires and temptations of the majority of Bostonians along with the minority practice of sodomy.5 |
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Similarly, the official language of the courts adopted a draconian tenor. "An Act for the Punishment of Buggery" described the "detestable and abominable Sin of Buggery with Mankind or Beast" as "contrary to the very Light of nature." The statute declared "that every man being duly convicted of lying with mankind as he lyeth with a Woman. . . . shall suffer the pains of Death."6 Although the statute's language is severe, infrequent prosecution indicates that the court system and the public were not especially concerned about sodomy as a criminal matter. As Richard Godbeer has suggested, sodomy likely did not differ from other moral crimes in that, so long as the violations remained discreet, community members were hesitant to disrupt social cohesion by trudging off to the courts to trigger a hearing, particularly when the guilty party was socially prominent or occupied a position of power. As in cases of rape, this reticence was probably compounded by an unwillingness to put a man who was not otherwise a social outcast to death, unless for a heinous crime. In short, the public appeared reluctant to pursue punishment of sodomy through legal means.7 |
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