No B.C. Kingship Government History For Gay Uncivilized AD Anno Domini Democracy

Introduction: Richard Weinmeyer, JD, MPhil-Citation 

Laws prohibiting sodomy existed in the penal codes of numerous US states for more than 100 years, criminalizing this sexual behavior between same-sex and opposite-sex partners. Two challenges to these laws ultimately made their way to the Supreme Court [1, 2], illuminating not only how the Court viewed the laws’ purpose and utility but also how American social norms had evolved since the laws were first placed on the books.

A Short History of Sodomy Laws in the United States

Sodomy laws in the nineteenth century. Although debates about sodomy laws during the latter half of the twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries focused almost entirely on their criminalization of homosexual conduct, nineteenth-century laws broadly construed sodomy as “crimes against nature, committed with mankind or with beast” [3]. This affront to nature was typically not defined by penal codes, so American courts relied on well-established common-law meanings of sodomy that involved the penetration of a “penis inside the rectum of an animal, a woman or girl, or another man or a boy” [3].

Punishing “homosexual sodomy” was not the driving force behind the implementation of these laws [4], which were intended to achieve two purposes. First, sodomy laws sought to protect “public morals and decency”; sodomy was listed along with bigamy, adultery, the creation and dissemination of obscene literature, incest, and public indecency [5]. Second, these laws were used to protect women, “weak men,” and children against sexual assault [6]. Court records from the nineteenth century reveal that these laws were used to prosecute nonconsensual activity and that consenting adults who engaged in sodomy within their homes were considered immune from prosecution [7].