This historically significant essay was one of the first attempts in modern times to examine homosexuality, putting it in a medical, historical and legal context, and to propose that civil rights should be extended to gay people. Along with Edward Carpenter and Walt Whitman, Symonds was one of the pioneers of gay rights and spirituality. Symonds later wrote a companion essay to this, A Problem in Greek Ethics, which drew on his extensive classical knowledge to examine homosexuality in ancient Greece.
