In the late colonial and early national eras, same-sex sexual behavior was at times still seen as a discrete sinful act unrelated to a person's identity. Only over time did the notion develop that homosexual acts unquestionably indicated an overall sexual identity.
In the new nation the penalty for sodomy was death, but prosecutions for same-sex behavior were rare. (Some, like Thomas Jefferson, proposed changing the penalty from death to castration.) The numbers of sodomy cases heard by the courts had declined through the colonial period. The overall lack of court cases, although notable when compared with much of Europe in the same period, does not mean that homosexuality was virtually unknown in early America. Society was generally intolerant of explicit same-sex sexual behavior and especially condemned such behavior when linked to gender nonconformity.
Newspapers and imported literature poked fun at men interested in sex with other men and, with ribald humor, derided their character. A variety of eighteenth-century print genres viewed same-sex sexual behavior as indicative of moral corruption, and some publications endorsed executing men convicted of committing sodomy. Only very rarely did print sources even broach the subject of lesbianism.
The term "Boston Marriage" did not come into public use until after the publication of Henry James's 1886 novel The Bostonians, in which an early feminist develops a strong attachment to a young woman from a prominent Boston family. But the relationship the term describes—a romantic friendship between two women, usually expressed through correspondence—had been known since the mideighteenth century. In the 1750s, for example, Sarah Prince and Esther Burr wrote letters to each other expressing mutual support and their intense passionate interest in each other. When Burr died Prince compared her love for her friend to that she felt for her husband. In the mid-nineteenth century, the literary critic and reformer Margaret Fuller expressed similar emotions in her description of falling in love at the age of thirteen with an Englishwoman. Such intense female friendships became socially acceptable and allowed some women to live together in partnerships.
Men's diaries and correspondence from the late eighteenth century also reveal passionate and romantic male friendships. The Bostonians Joseph Dennie and Roger Vose wrote to each other about building a "permanent friendship." Their letters reveal an intensity of emotion that may or may not have included physical intimacy when the two men were together in private. The essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) wrote in his journal a poem expressing the despair caused by his deep feelings for a classmate named Martin Gay.
European travelers had long noted sodomy in Native American communities. Missionaries of the Moravian Church, for example, traveling in Pennsylvania, New York, and North Carolina, wrote of "unnatural sins"—a broad term that usually suggested same-sex sexual behavior. Travelers and missionaries noted the presence of the berdache, individuals who appeared to be men dressed as women and performing women's social roles. Many of these individuals were believed to occupy a special spiritual realm. The berdache made an impression on European travelers and missionaries not only because of their gender ambiguity, but also because they were understood to engage in sodomy. Jesuit priests noted homosexual behavior among berdache while on journeys throughout California. Father Pedro Font, who recorded observing such individuals while traveling in 1775-1776, said he was told that such men were "not men like the rest"; he concluded that they were hermaphrodites and called them "sodomites." The berdache, according to European accounts, was known among many indigenous communities in North America well into the modern era.
In the new American nation same-sex sexual behavior and desire had not yet been psychologized and medicalized. Although sodomy was a capital crime, interest in same-sex sexual behavior and romance was not yet considered distinct from other sensual tendencies. Homosexual behavior was not seen as indicating exclusive homosexuality, and homosexuality itself was not yet conceived of as a determining factor in an individual's identity. Thus intense romantic relationships between members of the same sex could flourish without necessarily being reproached as a form of moral degeneration.