Stigmatising and defaming may have been effectual ways of putting down one's rivals and opponents. For those with weapons suitable enough, power struggles of the past may have been battles easily won. In this chapter I will examine the accusations of enemies and opponents of possible same-sex sexual activities and desires as one such suitable weapon in later medieval England. Some attacks were more successful than others. When such accusations were successful, they were most useful in defaming those attacked. Such accusations, often used together with other negative associations and stereotypes as purposely defaming processes, could create permanent marks on the reputations of the attacked, and I choose to call these purposefully defaming processes stigmatisations. Indications and explicit accusations of same-sex sexuality were used as weapons, playing a significant part in late medieval English political and religious power struggles. Same-sex sexual acts and desires were repeatedly implied and occasionally explicitly mentioned in political and moral argumentations. Many of these were publicly shared and aimed towards a larger group of readers and listeners. In such cases, the reasons and motives for creating noise instead of silence were often practical; they often accompanied desires to remove various political and religious enemies. Furthermore, I hope that by examining these discussions the later medieval English understanding concerning the deviant dimensions of same-sex sexual activities will widen as we discover some motives for the repeated accusations of extreme deviance.

The past allegations examined here were often not focused directly on issues of same-sex sexuality themselves, but functioned as parts of more complex accusations. The occasional and, at times, quite vivid uses of same-sex sexuality as a stigmatising tool overcame the often apparent silence surrounding the issue, precisely because such uses appear to have been sufficiently functional weapons against opponents. In examining these processes, condemnations of same-sex sexuality in later medieval England are further revealed as parts of a wider network of associations as such condemnations drew strength through their associations with other stigmatised behaviours.