Step it up Society: A brief note on homosexuality

   While reading the "Perspectives: Aestheticism, Decadence, and the fin de siecle", homosexuality comes up, and during this time towards the end of the century, the term homosexuality was created. Then on to the next reading, "The Trial of Oscar Wilde", it struck me as very interesting that Wisconsin was having a say on the trial of Oscar Wilde. First of all, Oscar Wilde was very well known, so it makes me proud that Wisconsin was able to participate in such a big event. But, I am not thrilled with Wisconsin's point of view. Even though same sex unions had been happening since forever, I do not believe they were publicly discussed, so when Oscar Wilde's trial became public knowledge I think a lot of people were shocked. It was a taboo subject that people did not want to discuss. And people reacted strongly against it, like the article about the trial goes on to say. This may just be a natural reaction to something different and foreign- to react with fear and make up all of these reasons why this "difference" is bad in order to justify their beliefs. According to the article, one theme was "Homosexuality causes Physical and Mental Illness". Now, that is just preposterous. But people legitimately believed that. I do not condone what these people said and their stance on this topic, but I can see where they were coming from. Science was not what it is today, so many people probably truly believed things like that, that could not have been backed up with true, scientific evidence. What upsets me though, is that there are still people today who think these sorts of things! And that is truly outrageous. While I can understand why people reacted the way they did over 100 years ago, you would think we'd have progressed a little more since then. Although as a society I do believe we have made some progress, there is still a long way to go. This is very upsetting because I feel like this article could be something we'd find today. I think it would be from a very extreme point of view, but it's still very bothersome. We have progressed with technology beyond what anyone could imagine, you'd think we'd have come a little farther with this. The telephone used in the late 19th century does not even closely resemble the modern day cell phone, so shouldn't beliefs and opinions about homosexuality from the late 19th century be just as different? (I don't know how strong that metaphor is, but hopefully you get what I mean.)