Walt Whitman's Calamus Poems, published for the first time in the 1860 edition of his Leaves of Grass, extolled "the love of comrades" - men's love for each other - at a time when homosexuality as such was still undefined. Many of Whitman's readers, including English essayist and poet Edward Carpenter, classical historian John Addington Symonds and Oscar Wilde, found in the Calamus Poems a legitimation of love between men, a kind of manifesto of homosexuality.

In 1874, Carpenter wrote to Whitman, "You have made men to be not ashamed of the noblest instinct of their nature. Women are beautiful; But, to some, there is that which passes the love of women." American writer Charles Stoddard saw the Calamus Poems as the expressions of a kindred spirit, writing, "I read your poems with a new spirit, to understand them as few may be able to." Whitman himself equivocated about the sexual aspect of the love of comrades, at least in his public statements. In his private life, the poet had passionate relationships with a number of men and intimate encounters with many more, as recorded in his correspondence and diaries.

Sources: Katz, Miller