A Queer History of the United States (ReVisioning History Book 1)

by Michael Bronski

In 1870, Ulrichs published Araxes: A Call to Free the Nature of the Urning from Penal Law. Using Enlightenment language, he mixes legal rhetoric about natural rights with moral arguments about the responsibilities of the state: The Urning, too, is a person. He, too, therefore, has inalienable rights. His sexual orientation is a right established by nature. Legislators have no right to veto nature; no right to persecute nature in the course of its work; no right to torture living creatures who are subject to those drives nature gave them. The Urning is also a citizen. He, too, has civil rights; and according to these rights, the state has certain duties to fulfill as well. The state does not have the right to act on whimsy or for the sheer love of persecution. The state is not authorized, as in the past, to treat Urnings as outside the pale of the law.