Homosexual

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

The term "homosexual" used to refer to a person rather than to an act is a neologism. In the 17th Century, the idea of sexuality had not been invented, and the public discourse through which it is created and regulated had not yet been defined. Some (Foucault, for instace) would argue that this left people in the past more free to do what they wanted, because while they still might be stoned to death for physical actions, there was not the idea of a compulsion to confess, or the medicalization of sexual impulses.