On this day, May 9, in 1726

Five men were executed in London for committing acts of sodomy, a crime punishable by death in England at that time. They had been arrested three months earlier, along with 40 other men, during a raid on one of London’s many molly houses. Molly houses, places where gay and transgender men gathered and engaged in sex, were sporadically raided by the police in order to intimidate and terrorize the queer community. Although the raids were never successful in eliminating the gay and gender defiant population, they were part of a larger social agenda to systematically marginalize and repress queer culture. Unfortunately things haven’t changed much.