What Was the Dutch Sodomy Panic?
by Wik Wikholm
Today, Amsterdam is well-known as the gay capital of Europe. Yet during the 18th century, sex between men was more aggressively prosecuted in Holland than in any other European nation.
The first wave of prosecutions began in Utrecht, a large Dutch city, when 22-year-old Zacharias Wilsma was arrested on a sodomy charge in 1730. Wilsma was interrogated under threat of torture, and he knew a conviction could mean death, so he cooperated with his questioners. He shocked officials with a detailed description of a "sodomitical underworld" in Holland's cities.
Wilsma named several sexual partners who lived in Amsterdam. The four men he accused were executed together in June 1730. Before they died, interrogators extracted a list of more than 40 names of fellow sodomites. The cycle of arrest, interrogation, and conviction continued, and investigations spread.
The testimony of Wilsma and others later in the century reveal that the underworld he told authorities about really existed. It had well-defined rituals, its own slang, and well-known meeting places. A man cruising for sex might propose "going to the office," a visit to a public toilet. Once there, he and his partner might choose "shaking out" (masturbation) or "dirty work" (anal sex).
Wilsma and the other convicts' revelations came at a time when Dutch society was primed for panic. King William III had led the nation to many successes, but his death in 1702 led to the deterioration of the Dutch military and a loss of territory in 1713. By 1730, a consensus had developed that the nation was declining. When Holland's Calvinist clergy learned about the sodomites, they seized on the news to explain the nation's ills.
According to the preachers, the Dutch had grown lazy during the years of plenty, and their idleness led them to sin; the most depraved descended into sodomy. The Dutch people had enraged God and were suffering the consequences. In sermons and printed broadsheets, preachers warned that worse punishments would follow unless Holland eliminated the sodomites and their secret underworld.
The panic that followed the discovery of the "sodomitic underworld" lasted for about two years. Paradoxically, the worst single incident of persecution did not occur in one of the large cities where sodomites congregated, but in a tiny peasant village named Faan. The tragic sequence of events there began in April 1731 when a blind 13-year-old boy alleged that his nephew had tried to have sex with him. The presiding judge, Rudolph de Mepsche, quickly concluded that Faan was infested by a band of sodomites and began a campaign to destroy it.
De Mepsche used the same methods of the city magistrates to root out Faan's sodomites. He interrogated and tortured the accused and forced them to reveal names. The detail of the confessions suggests that the accused often fabricated names and facts to escape torture.
Records of the Faan interrogations reveal that sodomites in the little farming village were very different from Zacharias Wilsma's crowd. Some of the accused did not even know what sodomy was when they came before de Mepsche. Once he explained it, they admitted to a dalliance by a barn or in a ditch, but Faan had no underworld for the judge to destroy. Still, de Mepsche had the convictions he needed to justify a mass execution. On September 24, 22 men and boys were tied to wooden stakes, strangled, and burned.
Periods of intense persecution recurred in 1764, 1776, and 1795, though none were as violent as the panic of 1730-1732.
Wik Wikholm produces www.gayhistory.com, an introduction to modern gay
history.
He can be reached on the site's discussion boards, or by e-mail at
wik@gayhistory.com.
Further Reading:
Boon, L. J. "Those Damned Sodomites: Public Images of Sodomy in the
19th Century Netherlands." Journal of Homosexuality Vol. 16 nos.
1 & 2 (1988).
Nordam, Dirk Jaap, 1988. "Sodomy in the Dutch Republic, 1600-1725."
Journal
of Homosexuality Vol. 16 Nos. 1 & 2.
van der Meer, Theo, 1988. "The Persecutions of Sodomites in Eighteenth
Century Amsterdam: Changing Perceptions of Sodomy." Journal of
Homosexuality Vol.16 Nos. 1 & 2.
van der Meer, Theo, 1997. "Sodom's Seed in The Netherlands: The
Emergence
of Homosexuality in the Early Modern Period." Journal of
Homosexuality
Vol. 34 No. 1.
|
|
| PlanetOut Direct |
News to You
Get PlanetOut News headlines mailed directly to you now!
|
|
Search
