Liberal author Naomi Wolf learned on-air in a BBC interview promoting her book that evidence supporting its premise is factually incorrect.
“I found several dozen executions,” Wolf said in the interview, explaining what she thought were executions in the 1800s in Britain for sodomy. Wolf was interviewing with BBC’s Matthew Sweet to promote her upcoming book, “Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love.”
“I don’t think you’re right about this,” Sweet replied to Wolf’s assertion that people were executed for sodomy.
“Death recorded — I was really surprised by this and I looked it up — death recorded is what’s in most of these cases that you’ve identified as executions. It doesn’t mean that he was executed. It was a category that was created in 1823 that allowed judges to abstain from pronouncing a sentence of death on any capital convict whom they considered to be a fit subject for pardon. I don’t think any of the executions you’ve identified here actually happened,” Sweet said.
“Well, that’s a really important thing to investigate,” Wolf responded, before she stumbled asking what Sweet actually meant by “death recorded.”
Sweet pointed to the example of Thomas Silva, who fell under the category of “death recorded” and was discharged later based on prison records.
“Aw,” Wolf said.
“I think it is quite a big problem with your argument,” Sweet said.
Wolf initially defended her book on Twitter, pointing to a peer-reviewed article from Cambridge University Press that discussed more than 50 executions in 19th century Britain for sodomy.
@DrMatthewSweet Did you want to address the peer-reviewed article I tweeted from Cambridge University Press that reports on over fifty executions in nineteenth century Britain for sodomy?
— Dr Naomi Wolf (@naomirwolf) May 24, 2019
Hours later she admitted she made a mistake.
“There is an error on on 71 and p 72 of my book Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love. 14 year old Thomas Silver, sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for sodomy, was not ultimately executed, nor was 60 year old John Spenser. Corrected,” Wolf said.
There is an error on on 71 and p 72 of my book Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love. 14 year old Thomas Silver, sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for sodomy, was not ultimately executed, nor was 60 year old John Spenser. Corrected. However….
— Dr Naomi Wolf (@naomirwolf) May 24, 2019
Wolf, an adviser to former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, is the author of the feminist book The Beauty Myth.
“Before 1857 it wasn’t ‘homosexuality’ that was a crime, but simply the act of sodomy. But in a single stroke, not only was love between men illegal, but anything referring to this love became obscene, unprintable, unspeakable,” the Amazon description of Wolf’s upcoming book says.
Everyone listen to Naomi Wolf realize on live radio that the historical thesis of the book she’s there to promote is based on her misunderstanding a legal term pic.twitter.com/a3tB77g3c1
— Edmund Hochreiter (@thymetikon) May 23, 2019
