A page of Tomlinson’s diary. Credit: The University of Oxford
An English farmer who lived 200 years ago was more woke about homosexuality than many people today, according to an entry from his newly unearthed diary.
Matthew Tomlinson was a farmer in West Yorkshire in Northern England. In January 1810, he heard about a naval surgeon who had been executed for sodomy and took to his journal to express why he thought criminalizing homosexuality was wrong.
In England and Wales, homosexuality was punishable by death until 1861, when it was replaced with a prison sentence. Homosexual acts remained illegal until 1967 when it was finally decriminalized.
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