"Listen to them... the children of the night... what music they make!" Dracula, Bram Stoker.

Yesterday, i finished reading a biography about Oscar Wilde, which was rather interesting actually, and i was struck by a couple of things.

Of course, i knew that homosexuality was forbidden until a few decades ago, but it really astonished me to learn that people could be jailed for two years for the only reason of having had sexual intercourses with willing adults of the same sex... It is quite beyond my understanding... I wonder if homosexuality was as widespread in prison as it is nowadays, which would be another reason to point out the pointlessness of it!

Actually, what i find even more difficult to understand is the fact that some people would still consider homosexuality as a crime nowadays and that this right may even be threatened in the future...
I don't understand why one should consider any act as a crime as long as that act does not hurt anyone physically or mentally, nor deprives anyone of anything. Why should it be the business of neighbours and the society to know that a wo/man prefers sex with another wo/man and / or is in love with another wo/man? Who should feel hurt or deprived? And why do some people feel hurt or deprived (whether they know the couple or not)? Can't they just mind their own business and let other people mind theirs? Are these people so bored that they have to be pains to people who are different from them?
In other words.... what makes some people so close-minded? (A type of education? Society? Religion? Fear?... I'm still wondering...)

Anyway... while reading, another point in the book struck me just as much, if not more.
I learnt that Oscar Wilde met André Gide, who was younger than him, a few times. Once they happened to be in a hotel in Algeria at the same time... From what i understood, A. Gide had homosexual attractions already, but had not yet given in. Oscar Wilde was the one to put him face to face with that fact by offering him to have an intercourse with a 14-year-old Algerian boy that he had hired (or even bought) to be a servant.

Now, homosexuality is just fine to me, but, on the other hand, i am completly SHOCKED by pedophilia! And this WAS pedophilia (topped with prostitution and slavery, when i think of it). I don't think that these facts were known in England by the time Wilde was put on trial, but i wonder whether the Victorian society would have sanctionned this more harshly or if they would have considered it just as another relationship... What was their point of view about such abuse on children?

I've read more than once in biographies (and I've been very surprised to learn) that North African countries were more open-minded on these questions back then: Byron along with so many other European writers before Wilde used to take trips to there for sexual purposes among others... But i really wonder if it wasn't more an economical matter for families and countries than anything else.... and if biographers were not being indulgent while saying so. In saying so, they indeed gave their character an excuse for inexcusable behaviours.