In response to this card, and with Douglas's avid support, but against the advice of friends such as Robbie Ross, Frank Harris, and George Bernard Shaw, Wilde had Queensberry arrested and charged with criminal libel in a private prosecution, as sodomy was then a criminal offence. According to libel laws of the time, since his authorship of the charge of sodomy was not in question, Queensberry could avoid conviction only by demonstrating in court not only that the charge he had made was factually true, but that there was also some public interest in having made the charge publicly. Edward Carson, Queensberry's lawyer, accordingly portrayed Wilde as a vicious older man who habitually preyed upon naive young boys and, with extravagant gifts and promises of a glamorous lifestyle, seduced them into a life of homosexuality. Several highly suggestive erotic letters that Wilde had written to Douglas were introduced into evidence; Wilde claimed they were works of art. Wilde was closely questioned about the homoerotic themes in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and in "The Chameleon", a single-issue magazine published by Douglas to which Wilde had contributed his 'Phrases and Philosophies for Use of the Young'.