English Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham wrote, around 1785, an essay on “Paederasty.” The essay, which runs to over 60 manuscript pages, is the first known argument for homosexual law reform in England, but he did not publish it because of the virulence of the prevailing attitude towards sex between men. In the essay Bentham advocates the decriminalization of sodomy, which in his day was punished by hanging. He argues that homosexual acts do not “weaken” men, or threaten population or marriage, and documents their prevalence in ancient Greece and Rome. Bentham opposes punishment on utilitarian grounds and attacks ascetic sexual morality.

Regarding Jesus and the Beloved Disciple, Bentham wrote: "If the love which in these passages Jesus was intended to be represented as bearing towards this John was not the same sort of love as that which appears to have had place between David and Jonathan, the son of Saul, it seems not easy to conceive what can have been the object in bringing it to view in so pointed a manner accompanied with such circumstances of fondness. That the sort of love of which in the bosom of Jesus Saint John is here meant to be represented as the object was of a different sort from any of which any of the other of the Apostles was the object is altogether out of dispute. For of this sort of love, whatever sort it was, he and he alone is in these so frequently recurring terms maintained as being the object.” Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)