![cabin boy made into gay sex slave cabin boy made into gay sex slave](https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article4563538.ece/ALTERNATES/s1200/PAY-Caged-bride.jpg)
Perpetrators of these felonies rarely were put to death (Burg 1995:3). Though laws dated to the 16 th century proscribed death as punishment for sodomy or “buggery,” this does not indicate that the “offense” was particularly distasteful, as capital punishment was prescribed for a myriad of seemingly minor felonies, such as the improper transport of livestock. With no strict, unifying religious prohibition against it, sodomy and moral arguments therein were anciallry topics of little importance. This was significant, as it created a religious vacuum and encouraged religious radicalism as an alternative. Parliament eventually gained power, executed King Charles I, and dissolved the Church of England. English society was dominated by power struggles in which the King and Parliament would compete for legitimate power. Burg notes that, “Seventeenth-century Englishmen on all status levels were remarkably indulgent with homosexuality, at least when judged by the attitudes of their Victorian and twentieh-century counterparts” (1995:41).Įngland from 1630 to 1650 was characterized by an extreme sense of division over proper use of government authority and the “form of the national church” (Burg 1995:9). Church officials were equally likely to condemn depravity in heterosexual and homosexual relations. Homosexual conduct was a far less divise issue in 17 th century England. Public Perception of Sodomy in English Society Predating the Golden Age While the life of a Golden Age pirate may not have been as gripping and dramatic as many fictionalized accounts would have us believe, it was still a venue for a myriad of social interactions that shed light on a counterculture unlike any other before or since.
![cabin boy made into gay sex slave cabin boy made into gay sex slave](https://broadly-images.vice.com/images/2016/07/28/the-secret-lives-of-cross-dressing-sissies-body-image-1469724587.jpg)
These embellishments obscure and distort an otherwise informative slice of historical sociology. It is hard to imagine this period in history without the flamboyant imagery of adventure and lawlessness that has saturated popular culture for centuries. The lifestyle of an 18 th century pirate in the West Indies has been romanticized to mythic proportions.