Morality and sexual difference then and now

It is most likely that Housman had concluded by the late 1880s that he was different, most likely homosexual. There was no suggestion that Edward or Lucy were ever aware of this fact or that any behaviour of Housman's prompted enquiry. No additional shadows were placed over his life by parental rejection, though for Housman the potential must always have been there.

Writing today about Housman's sexual orientation may seem to be superfluous but it is relevant to examine how he handled his situation then and throughout his life. In particular, the moral and social significance of sexual relationships in British society seems to have been totally recalibrated. Commonplaces of British society today are that unmarried young people live together careless of reactions from parents or society; couples frequently have children before they marry; birth control makes the procreation of children a matter of choice; divorce will be the fate of about half the population of marrieds. Civil partnerships and marriage for same sex couples have been introduced; after a debate in the British House of Commons on gay marriage, the Prime Minister David Cameron was reported at the time as saying in a broadcast:

Sexual activity seems to have been deprived of its social and religious significances. It has become clear that enjoyment of any particular variety of sexual pleasure is not restricted to a particular part of the gender spectrum. Our vocabulary and usage seems not to have caught up with these facts, and not with the reality of a spectrum that ranges from platonic friendships based on pleasurable traits and companionship, through all kinds of physical alliances prompted by the giving and receiving of bodily pleasure, to rounder and more complex attachments where sexual compatibility and unconditional devotion co-exist. Any equation of the words ‘sex’ and ‘love’ is today misguided in the extreme.