arently accepted. Reynolds also includes in his study a consensus done by Michael Lynch. Lynch examined upwards of 75,000 indictments from New York dating from 1796 to 1893. Of these, only 30 dealt with sodomy, all involving “force, violence, injury, or pain”; and of these 30 cases, only two resulted in convictions(394-95). To justify this love between men, society discussed this relationship in two ways: through the traditional concept of Christian Fraternization and the newly popular language of phrenology. In regards to the former, the concept of Brotherly love was based on the idea that one man should love another as Christ and his disciples loved each other. Through these affectionate bonds, lovers were not only joined to each other, but also to Christ. This model was also manifested in the Biblical relationship of David and Jonathan in the Old Testament. Whereupon hearing news of Jonathan’s death, David responds, “I grieve for you,/ My brother Jonathan,/ You were most dear to me,/ Your love was wonderful to me/ more than the love of women”(1Sam26). The second language used, phrenology, was a 1790's phenomenon, develop first in Vienna, which used the bumps on a person’s head to study or determine character. The major belief of many phrenologists was one that studied the brain as a web of small organs, each of which determined a different center of activity. One branch of phrenology broke down the human character into forty-two different faculties, some of which included parental love, combativeness, cautiousness and firmness. The two most important faculties used to study same-sex love, however, were Adhesiveness and Amativeness. The former according to the phrenologists was different from the procreative love of the latter and was one only studied in terms of male-male relationships as a manly friendship, manly almost always being stressed. Whitman, however, was able to use t...
