“Stable Person Required”

[erastes]

That was the wording (that, and nothing else but a phone number) on an advert in my local shop.

Don’t think I’ll apply. Don’t think I qualify.

I – like a few others on my flist – am getting terminally sick of round-up Twitter posts.  I’ve probably already read them, as I Twitter and my flist is gradually getting more and more full of them.  It’s nothing personal, but if you find I’ve dropped you, it’s because you only post post Tweets.

i started an ebook today, set in the 19th century, and the protag had to leave his country because of a scandal over an "underaged boy" who looked “old enough”

HEAD

DESK

What exactly was the age of consent for homosexual sex in the 19th century ?

 

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Comments

[chris-smith-atr.livejournal.com]

Well, we all know how liberal the Dutch Reformed Church is. :)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

*swigs jenever*

[kalitakasar.livejournal.com]

The twitter roundup posts do become annoying after a while. I stopped posting them, because it annoyed ME to be reposting stuff I'd already said a day ago.

As to the age of consent...is that a trick question? ;)

[geishawhite.livejournal.com]

Yep. It was illegal until the 20th century.

[kalitakasar.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know. I was kidding. :)

[aigooism.livejournal.com]

*nods* Agreed on the Twitter roundup post. I don't mind them, but if that's all that's going to appear in the journal, then for pete's sake just have a Twitter and not the journal!

[aunty_marion]

There's a way of blanking off the Twitter round-ups - I've used it on IJ, but most of the people who post them to LJ have (finally!) been persuaded to cut-tag them, so I can just skim them.

I tweet, but it stays on Twitter and Facebook. And I don't tweet much.

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

::blinks slowly:: I think it's a trick question. There couldn't have been an age of consent because homosexuality in general was illegal...or so I thought. Unless that author has information I don't.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

correct! have a banana!

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

I like bananas. Bananas are good. ;)

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

Oooohkay. Someone isn't doing their research. Evidently. I am going to have to find out what the law/custom was in the Middle East, in the 19th century, though. Hmmmmmm.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

It doesn't look like there was an age of consent in the Ottoman Empire, though they did have pederasty--which was illegal, and punishable by death under Muslim law--and cross-dressing male dancers called kocheks. (This is not correct spelling, but LJ will not permit me to use an umlaut over the O or a C with a backwards hook under it.)

[anderyn.livejournal.com]

I understand about the accents. Believe you me, I understand (I work at a company that uses a typesetting language called TeX so as to get all accents and math correct, but a lot of our contributors don't have it handy, so do ALL sorts of interesting typographical tricks/approximations).

Thanks for that. I knew it was technically illegal under Muslim law, but there are so many love poems to boys with "bottoms like peaches" in medieval Persian and suchlike verse that I wasn't sure how often the practice was winked at and how often it was "off with their heads!"

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Pederasty in the Ottoman Empire appears to have been like Prohibition in America. It was illegal; you were in trouble if you got caught; and most people broke the law anyway.

One prevailing idea is that sex between two adult males was so loathed that men simply decided that while sex between two men was sodomy, sex between a man and a boy was totally NOT, because he was a boy and not a man. (Yeah, it totally sounds like a line that NAMBLA would use.)

Also, the love of two men was okay--and even admired, in some cases--as long as they were both celibate. (Sort of like the Catholic Church's attitude toward homosexuality. You can be gay. That's not a problem. But you can't have sex, because that would be a sin.)

[ammonite7.livejournal.com]

I saw a recent documentary that Muslim law (in Iran, I believe) allows a man to have a sex change operation if he believes he should be a woman. This is perfectly acceptable in current society, but, if he does not have the operation, he is not acceptable. Therefore, many men feel forced into having the operation.

What kind of shit is this?

[beckyblack]

What exactly was the age of consent for homosexual sex in the 19th century ?

90. And you needed permission from both your parents. ;-)

[chris-smith-atr.livejournal.com]

I think I love you.

Don't worry E (with whom the streets are paved) I still love you mostest.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Don't forget the part about the permission having to be in writing and witnessed by the Lord Chancellor of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

[suryaofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Twitter roundups - i've defriended otherwise interesting people because these are just so pointless.