Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

supremeherptile is essentially correct, but it turns out the miscibility of "sin" and "crime" (and "illness"!) where homosexuality (among other things) is concerned is wicked fascinating. And, uh, has to do tangentially with my thesis, which I'm procrastinating working on by writing on LJ. :D

One of the consequences of the Enlightenmenttm is that Western society eventually realized that it had to rethink whether "offense against god" was a good basis for a penal code, and if not that, then what. It took about a hundred years for society as a whole to really work its way around to addressing this question seriously, and it mostly went down in the latter third of the 19th century.

It's around then that the historical record (in Germany, BTW) first shows activists arguing for the decriminalization of homosexuality (well, sodomy). Indeed, the very first use of the word "homosexuality" or its cognates in the historical record was in such a document:

The word homosexuality did not exist prior to 1869, when it appeared in a pamphlet that took the form of an open letter to the German minister of justice (the German word is homosexualität). A new penal code for the North German Federation was being drafted, and a debate had arisen over whether to retain the section of the Prussian criminal code which made sexual contact between persons of the same gender a crime. The pamphlet's author, Karl Maria Kertbeny (1824-82), was one of several writers and jurists who were beginning to develop the concept of sexual orientation. This idea -- that some individuals' sexual attraction for persons of the same sex was an inherent and unchanging aspect of their personality -- was radically new. (Mondimore, 1996)