Records don't show whether Richard Cornish felt like a martyr almost 400 years ago as he stood on a Jamestown gallows with a rope around his neck. But he was adopted as one by the William and Mary Gay and Lesbian Alumni Association. GALA and a number of activists and historians recognize Cornish as the first man prosecuted and executed for homosexuality in the British North American colonies.

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Whether Cornish, a ship's captain, was a hero or a heel depends on who's looking. As with most things historical, interpretations vary as 21st-century academics try to examine 17th-century events. GALA members said the name they chose for the fund was influenced by the works of historians who smelled double standards and unconvincing testimony in the Cornish case. Some historians say that, at a time when homosexual sex was a hanging offense -- at least for men - crying rape to avoid the noose wouldn't have surprised them.

GALA discussed and dismissed concerns about using Cornish as a namesake before unanimously approving it as "the right thing to do," said Stephen Snell, who chaired the GALA fundraising committee.

They relied in part on writings about Cornish by Adam Goodheart, who directs an American history center at Washington College in Chestertown, Md., and concluded that Cornish was punished for sodomy, not rape.

"I think he has been adopted as a symbol of a long history of legal oppression and discrimination that is very well documented and can't be denied," Goodheart said. "It's just a question of some of the details of his case."

Those details are few.

Disagreement soon began over Cornish's guilt and punishment.

About a year later, witnesses told the court that an Edward Nevell, who had attended Cornish's trial and execution, had said Cornish "was hanged for a rascally boye wrongfully" and "he was put to death through a scurvie boys meanes, & no other came against him."

The displeased court ordered both of Nevell's ears cut off and that he stand in the marketplace pillory, serve the colony for a year and never become a freeman.

Criticism persisted. Two months later, according to a court transcript in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography at the Kirn library, witnesses said Thomas Hatch, a 17-year-old Jamestown servant, said he thought Cornish had been wrongfully hanged.

Someone warned Hatch to be careful, recalling Nevell's punishment. Answered Hatch: "I care not for my ears, lett them hang me yf they will."

The court obliged, in part. It ordered that Hatch lose one ear, be whipped from the fort to the gallows and back, be locked in the pillory and serve his master for another seven years.

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For GALA, Couse's age -- "He knew what he was doing," Snell said -- and the extension of his servitude played into their decision. "There certainly seemed to be good reason to give Mr. Cornish his due," said Wayne Curtis, the group's president. "It seemed to be entirely appropriate."