Some seventeenth-century libertine writers were accused of sodomy, most famously Theophile de Viau, who was condemned to be burned at the stake, for both atheism and sodomy. Some scholars of queer theory would like to present them primarily as victims of homophobia. But if we observe their works, we hardly find that they express homosexuality in its contemporary meaning and form. To adress this question of sexuality, we can distinguish two kinds of texts. Some of them describe and praise acts of sodomy, without differentiating between boys and girls. Their authors merely target transgression, in a provocative way. Another kind of poetry and fiction emphasizes relationship between males as an ideal of beauty and love, relying on Platonism or Ovidian myths to remove even the thought of sexual intercourse. So, paradoxically, seventeenth-century libertine poetry has expressed and dignified homosexual desire buy denying its sexual part.