Writers such as Denis Diderot, Jean-Paul Marat, Montesquieu, and Voltaire had written about the need to decriminalize personal sexual behavior (which they saw as an ethical decision, not a criminal one), even if they personally thought sodomy was wrong or unnatural. (Voltaire’s famous quip about his own forays into male-male sexual activity displays Enlightenment ambivalence: “Once, a scientist; twice, a sodomite.”)
