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Whitman's Overreaction to Homosexuality
The word homosexual didn't come into the language until 1892, which was the year he died. He channeled his very strong feelings about young men into poetry and into loving behaviour with these men - not necessarily having genital sex with them, but sleeping with them. That kind of affection was not at all frowned upon. The poems which caused upset were the children of Adam poems or the... Or Phon Adam poems,. Those are the ones that Emerson said you've got to get rid of because they are offensive. And that's the reason that his books were banned and he lost his job in 1865. His last 20 years of his life was very unhappy. Undoubtedly the Europeans did play a