London (CNN) An English farmer writing more than 200 years ago had more modern and liberal views on homosexuality than many governments do today, an entry in a newly discovered diary shows. Matthew Tomlinson, a farmer from West Yorkshire in Northern England, wrote in January 1810 that homosexuality was innate and that punishing it by death was cruel. A page of Tomlinson's diary. The find has upended historians' assumptions about historical attitudes to homosexuality, contradicting the view that it was unanimously seen as abnormal and dangerous at the time -- and could be considered a more modern attitude than those held by the 70 countries around the world that still criminalize homosexuality. develops] into manhood; it must then be considered as natural, otherwise, as a defect in nature ... it seems cruel to punish that defect with death."

Source: CNN February 10, 2020 13:18 UTC