Callie's crime?

It also can be and often is physically painful and emotionally damaging. And it makes the perpetrator despicable. Even if it didn't have all those social consequences it would still be hurtful and wrong in and of itself.

Yes, but that was kind of the point. If it had been a guy, the beating and humiliation he would have received would have been for the same purpose - to cause damage both physically and emotionally.

As for homosexuality, it was homosexual acts which were illegal. Homosexuality was not recognised as a sexual persuasion, it was simply labelled as perversion - the act itself called sodomy or buggery.

The 19th century was a time when legislators in the Western world started to view homosexuality with more leniency and question the appropriateness of the death sentence. Popular opinion has lagged behind, however, with vocal support for the death penalty being relatively uncontroversial until... well, almost these days. Possibly the worst single anti-gay crime in recent times was the 1973 arson attack on the UpStairs Lounge, resulting in 32 deaths and 15 injuries. It was not addressed by city authorities, and received a minimum of attention in the media. To most people, it was a source of cheap jokes.

Were they by extension then - also not totally "unforgiving" towards their perpetrator and spend their lives wishing they were jailed or dead as a form of justifiable vengeance? (Even in this film, Callie attempts to shoot Clint Eastwood's character as a result for what he did to her.)

No, not unforgiving at all, actually. One of them was raped at a party when she was 13 - it was her first sexual encounter. She wasn't supposed to be at that party, so she never told her parents. She did not know the man, but she told me she could tell that he was not loved. She was 26 when she told me this, at which point she said she felt more pity than resentment for her attacker.

Another girlfriend of mine was raped by her then-boyfriend when she tried to break up with him. It was an emotionally abusive relationship, and the trauma was more from the relationship as a whole rather than that single event - even though that was horrific enough. And yet, she said she had never stopped loving him. She did have emotional issues, but these predated that boyfriend - and were probably why she hooked up with him in the first place.

The third one, I don't have all the details. She was sexually abused by her uncle as a child, but she did not tell me more than that. She did, however, tell me of a time she had sex with five guys. The first time she told me, she related it as a hot experience, telling me to turn me on. But later, when she gave more details, she recounted how these men had used her as a piece of meat, telling her how worthless she was. While she was a willing participant, it was obviously still abusive - and who knows what they would have done had she resisted.

That's the curious thing about sexuality, though, and it's a coping mechanism: a sexually traumatic event can either turn you very off, or it can turn you very on. It is not unusual at all for rape victims to use their traumatic experiences in their sexual fantasies. And rape fantasies are very common regardless, especially among women. Sexuality is arguably the most curious aspect of the human psyche.

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