“Gay rights is another idea whose time has come. Homosexual acts used to be a criminal offense in almost every country in the world.34 The first arguments that behavior between consenting adults is no one else’s business were formulated during the Enlightenment by Montesquieu, Voltaire, Beccaria, and Bentham.” (Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now)

But was homosexuality always in need of such a defense? Seems like this is put in to support the narrative that the enlightenment fixed this problem too, though maybe it wasn’t always the same kind of problem. How much of our modern improvements were started by the enlightenment?