James G. Kiernan was an American psychologist, prominent in American gay history for the first recorded use of the terms "heterosexual" and "homosexual" in 1892. Jonathan Ned Katz

Jonathan Ned Katz

Jonathan Ned Katz is an American historian of human sexuality who has focused on same-sex attraction and changes in the social organization of sexuality over time...

, historian of the American gay and lesbian experience, cites Kiernan's initial attribution of perversion to the term "heterosexual." Kiernan went on to write of a variety of topics, e.g. Mary MacLane

Mary MacLane

Mary MacLane was a controversial Canadian-born American writer whose frank memoirs helped usher in the confessional style of autobiographical writing...

's disciple Viola Larsen, who stole a horse and wrote romantic letters to other girls, as an example of child precocity and possible genius.

External links

• http://www.outhistory.org/wiki/Kiernan:_%22Heterosexual,%22_%22Homosexual,%22_May_1892