The history of sodomy in the eighteenth century is not simply the history of repression. It encapsulates the history of all of society. It can provide a key to unlock the mysteries of the history of gender, sexuality, individual identity, human society's relationship to the physical world, and even (it has been claimed) the mysteries of the rise of modern capitalism. It remains however, a history that has just begun to be written, centering, so far, on three themes: the nature of governmental repression, the organization of sodomitical life, and the meaning for gender of the presence or absence of a specific sodomitical role.

The first articles dealing with the history of sodomy appeared in standard historical journals a mere ten years ago. They have come out of at least three intellectual milieus. Some historians who set out to study crime, deviance, and witchcraft have collected and tried to interpret the sodomy trials they found among their materials. Others began with the history of the family and then turned to the history of sexuality, and so of homosexuality. Some historians, as participants in the Gay Liberation movement, have gone looking for their roots. And increasingly, and perhaps most promisingly, the historians of gender have begun to see the importance of the topic. Some of us, of course, have taken up the topic for a combination of reasons.