Outrages

The Obscene Publications Act was a crucial turning point. Why? Because dissent and morality; 'deviancy' and 'normalcy'; unprintable and printable were suddenly lawful concepts in the modern sense. This new law effectively invented modern obscenity. Before 1857, the act of sodomy was a crime. And not only was love between men illegal, but anything referring to this love also became obscene, unprintable, unspeakable. Wolf recounts how a dying Symonds helped write the book on 'sexual inversion' that created our modern understanding of homosexuality. She argues that his secret memoir mined and explained here fully for the first time, evolved into what would become the first mainstream gay rights manifesto in the west.