[[File:Penalización de la homosexualidad por país.png|thumb|520px|Legal status of sodomy laws around the world as of 2024:
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A sodomy law is a law that defines certain sexual acts as crimes. The precise sexual acts meant by the term sodomy are rarely spelled out in the law, but are typically understood and defined by many courts and jurisdictions to include any or all forms of sexual acts that are illegal, illicit, unlawful, unnatural and immoral.
Sodomy typically includes anal sex, oral sex, manual sex, and zoophilia. In practice, sodomy laws have rarely been enforced to target against sexual activities between individuals of the opposite sex, and have mostly been used to target against sexual activities between individuals of the same sex.As of April 2025, 63 countries as well as 3 sub-national jurisdictions have laws that criminalize sexual activity between 2 individuals of the same-sex. In 2006 that number was 92. Among these 62 countries, 40 of them not only criminalize male same-sex sexual activity but also have laws that criminalize female same-sex sexual activity. In 11 of them, sexual activity between two individuals of the same-sex is punishable with the death penalty.
In 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed an LGBT rights resolution, which was followed up by a report published by the UN Human Rights Commissioner which included scrutiny of the mentioned codes. In March 2022, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women found that laws criminalizing consensual same-sex activity between women are a human rights violation. This case, brought by Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, was the first United Nations case to focus on lesbian and bisexual women.
In the Roman Republic, the Lex Scantinia (which is first described in documents dating back to 50 BCE) imposed penalties on those who committed a sex crime (stuprum) against a freeborn male minor. The law may also have been used to prosecute male citizens who willingly played the passive role in same-sex acts. The law was mentioned in literary sources but enforced infrequently; Domitian revived it during his program of judicial and moral reform. It is unclear whether the penalty was death or a fine. For adult male citizens to experience and act on homoerotic desire was considered permissible, as long as their partner was a male of lower social standing. Pederasty in ancient Rome was acceptable only when the younger partner was a prostitute or slave.
Starting in the 1200s, the Roman Catholic Church launched a campaign against homosexual activity. Between the years 1250 and 1300, homosexual activity was criminalized in most of Europe, possibly even punishable by death.
In England, Henry VIII introduced the first legislation under English criminal law against sodomy with the Buggery Act 1533, making buggery punishable by hanging, a penalty not lifted until 1861. Following Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, the crime of sodomy has often been defined only as the "abominable and detestable crime against nature", or some variation of the phrase. This language led to widely varying rulings about what specific acts were encompassed by its prohibition.
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In 1786 Pietro Leopoldo of Tuscany, abolishing the death penalty for all crimes, became not only the first Western ruler to do so, but also the first ruler to abolish the death penalty for sodomy (which was replaced by prison and hard labour).
In France, it was the French Revolutionary penal code (issued in 1791) which for the first time struck down "sodomy" as a crime, decriminalizing it together with all "victimless-crimes" (sodomy, heresy, witchcraft, blasphemy), according with the concept that if there was no victim, there was no crime. The same principle was held true in the Napoleon Penal Code in 1810, which was imposed on the large part of Europe then ruled by the French Empire and its cognate kings, thus decriminalizing sodomy in most of Continental Europe.
In 1830, Emperor Pedro I of Brazil signed a law into the Imperial Penal Code. It eliminates all references to sodomy. Beyond Carnival. Green, James. The University of Chicago Press. 1999.
During the Ottoman Empire, homosexuality was decriminalized in 1858 as part of wider reforms during the Tanzimat period.
The death penalty was not lifted in England and Wales until 1861. (Section: "Gay rights prior to the 20th century")
In 1917, following the Bolshevik Revolution led by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, Russia legalized homosexuality. However, when Joseph Stalin came to power in 1920s, these laws were reversed. Homosexuality remained effectively illegal until 1993, after the fall of the Soviet Union, when sodomy was once again decriminalized.
During the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938), there was a movement to repeal sodomy laws. It has been claimed that this was the first campaign to repeal anti-gay laws that was spearheaded primarily by heterosexuals.
After the publishing of the 1957 Wolfenden report in the United Kingdom, which asserted that "homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence", many western governments, including many U.S. states, repealed laws specifically against homosexual acts. However, by 2003, 13 U.S. states still criminalized homosexuality, along with many Missouri counties, and the territory of Puerto Rico, but in June 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that state laws criminalizing private, non-commercial sexual activity between consenting adults at home on the grounds of morality are unconstitutional since there is insufficient justification for intruding into people's liberty and privacy.
There have never been Western-style sodomy related laws in Taiwan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea, Poland, or Vietnam. Additionally, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were part of the French colony of French Indochina; male homosexual acts have been legal throughout the French Empire since the issuing of the aforementioned French Revolutionary penal code in 1791.
As of 2024, sodomy-related laws have been repealed or judicially struck down in all of Europe, North America, and South America, except for Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
In Africa, male homosexual acts remain punishable by death in Mauritania and some parts of Nigeria and Somalia. Male and sometimes female homosexual acts are minor to major criminal offences in many other African countries; for example, life imprisonment is a prospective penalty in Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. A notable exception is South Africa, where same-sex marriage is legal.
In Asia, male homosexual acts remain punishable by death in Afghanistan, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Anti-sodomy laws have been repealed in Israel (which recognises but does not perform same-sex marriages), Japan, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, and Thailand.UNDP, USAID (2014). Being LGBT in Asia: Thailand Country Report, p. 21. Bangkok. Retrieved 21 April 2024.
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Following the Wolfenden report, the Don Dunstan Labor government introduced a consenting adults in private type legal defence in South Australia in 1972. This defence was initiated as a bill by Murray Hill, father of former defence minister Robert Hill, and repealed the state's sodomy law in 1975. The Campaign Against Moral Persecution during the 1970s raised the profile and acceptance of Australia's gay and lesbian communities, and other states and territories repealed their laws between 1976 and 1990. The exception was Tasmania, which retained its laws until the federal government and the United Nations Human Rights Committee forced their repeal in 1997.
Male homosexuality was decriminalised in the Australian Capital Territory in 1976, then Norfolk Island in 1993, following South Australia in 1975 and Victoria in 1981. At the time of legalization (for the above), the age of consent, rape, defences, etc. were all set gender-neutral and equal . Western Australia legalised male homosexuality in 1989 – Under the Law Reform (Decriminalization of Sodomy) Act 1989, as did New South Wales and the Northern Territory in 1984 with unequal ages of consent of 18 for New South Wales and the Northern Territory and 21 for Western Australia. Then since 1997, the states and territories that retained different ages of consent or other vestiges of sodomy laws have tended to repeal them later; Western Australia did so in 2002, and New South Wales and the Northern Territory did so in 2003. Tasmania was the last state to decriminalise sodomy, doing so in 1997 after the groundbreaking cases of Toonen v Australia and Croome v Tasmania (it is also notable that Tasmania was the first jurisdiction to recognize same-sex couples in Australia since 2004 under the Relationships Act 2003). In 2016, Queensland became the final Australian jurisdiction to equalise its age of consent for all forms of sexual activity at 16 years, after reducing the age of consent for anal sex from 18 years.
Sodomy was decriminalized after the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968-69 (Bill C-150) received royal assent on 27 June 1969. The offences of buggery and "gross indecency" were still in force, however the new act introduced exemptions for married couples, and any two consenting adults above the age of 21 regardless of gender or sexual orientation. The bill had been originally introduced in the House of Commons in 1967 by then Minister of Justice Pierre Trudeau, who famously stated that "there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation".
Revisions to the Criminal Code in 1987 repealed the offence of "gross indecency", changed "buggery" to "anal intercourse" and reduced the age exemption from 21 to 18. An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Canada Evidence Act, R.S.C. 1985 (3d Supp.), c. 19. Section 159 of the Criminal Code continued to criminalize anal sex in general, with exemptions (provided no more than two people are present) for husbands and wives, and two consenting parties above the age of 18.
Subsequent case law held that section 159 was unconstitutional, thus anal sex was de facto legal between any two or more consenting persons above the age of consent (14). In the 1995 Court of Appeal for Ontario case R. v. M. (C.) the judges ruled that the law was unconstitutional on the basis that the specific exemptions based on marital status and age infringed on the social equality guaranteed by section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and constituted discrimination based on sexual orientation. A similar decision was made by the Quebec Court of Appeal in the 1998 case R. v. Roy. In a 2002 decision regarding a case in which three people were engaged in sexual intercourse, the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta declared section 159 in its entirety to be null, including the provisions criminalizing anal sex when more than two persons are taking part or present.
NDP MP Joe Comartin introduced private member's bills in 2007 and 2011 to repeal section 159 of the Criminal Code, however neither passed first reading.
In June 2019, C-75 passed both houses of the Parliament of Canada and received royal assent, repealing section 159 effective immediately and making the age of consent equal at 16 for all individuals.
In Hong Kong "Homosexual Buggery" is prohibited. Before 2014, according to the Crimes Ordinance Section 118C,CRIMES ORDINANCE, Chapter 200, Section 118C, Homosexual buggery with or by man under 21, hklii.hk both of the two men must be at least 16 to commit homosexual buggery legally or otherwise both of them can be liable to life imprisonment. Sect 118F states that committing homosexual buggery not privately is also illegal and can be liable to imprisonment for 5 years.
"Heterosexual Buggery". A man who commits buggery with a girl under 21 can also be liable for life imprisonment ( Sect 118D) while no similar laws concerning committing heterosexual buggery in private exist.
In 2005, Judge Hartmann found these 4 laws: Sect 118C, 118F, 118H, and 118J were discriminatory towards gay males and unconstitutional under the Hong Kong Basic Law and contrary to the Bill of Rights Ordinance in a judicial review filed by a Hong Kong resident. It was believed that the age of consent had been reduced from 21 to 16 for any kind of homosexual sex acts. In 2014, the ordinance was amended according to the judgement.
Prior to that ruling, both male and female types of same-sex sexual activity were illegal in Dominica, as was anal intercourse between persons of the opposite sex. State Sponsored Homophobia: A world survey of laws criminalising same-sex sexual acts between consenting adults, The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, edited by Lucas Paoli Itaborahy, May 2012, p. 58
In 1960, a parliamentary amendment by Paul Mirguet added homosexuality to a list of "social scourges", along with alcoholism and prostitution. This prompted the government to increase the penalties for public display of a sex act when the act was homosexual. transvestism or homosexuals caught cruising were also the target of police repression.
In 1981, the 1960 law making homosexuality an aggravating circumstance for public indecency was repealed. Then in 1982, under president François Mitterrand, the law from 1942 (Vichy France) making the age of consent for homosexual sex higher (18) than for heterosexual sex (15) was also repealed, despite the vocal opposition of Jean Foyer in the National Assembly.
In modern German language, the term Sodomie has a meaning different from the English language word "sodomy": it does not refer to anal sex, but acts of zoophilia. The change occurred mostly in the middle of the 19th century, at least in the last decade of the century. Only the moral theology of the Roman Catholic church changed not until some time after World War II to the term homosexuality.
India does not recognize same-sex unions of any type. In October 2023, in Supriyo v. Union of India, the Supreme Court held that the legalization of same-sex marriage is not a matter for the courts to decide on the grounds that the right to marry is a statutory right, not a constitutional one.
In the late 1960s, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that these laws could not be enforced against consenting adults. Though unenforced, these laws remained in the penal code until 1988, when they were formally repealed by the Knesset. The age of consent for both heterosexuals and homosexuals is 16 years of age.
The Code Napoléon made sodomy legal between consenting adults above the legal age of consent in all Italy except in the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Austria-ruled Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, and the Papal states.
In the newborn (1860) Kingdom of Italy, Sardinia extended its legal code on the whole of Northern Italy, but not in the South, which made homosexual behaviour legal in the South and illegal in the North. However, the first Italian penal code (Codice Zanardelli, 1889) decriminalised same-sex intercourse between consenting adults above the legal age of consent for all regions; the law has not changed since it was enacted.
Previously, Section 250(1) of the Mauritius Criminal Code of 1838 held that "Any person who is guilty of the crime of sodomy ... shall be liable to penal servitude for a term not exceeding 5 years." "State-sponsored Homophobia: A world survey of laws prohibiting same sex activity between consenting adults", International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, authored by Lucas Paoli Itaborahy and Jingshu Zhu, May 2013, p. 51 Under the Supreme Court's 2023 judgement, the section should "be read so as to exclude such consensual acts from its ambit."
Homosexual sex was legalised in New Zealand as a result of the passing of the Homosexual Law Reform Act 1986. The age of consent was set at 16 years, the same as for heterosexual sex.
Previously, Sections 56 and 57 of the "Offences Against the Person Act" criminalized same-sex sexual activity. The Court ruled that the sections violated the Saint Kitts and Nevis constitutional provisions guaranteeing a right to privacy and freedom of expression. The ruling had immediate effect.
In 2011, the government of St. Kitts and Nevis said it had no mandate from the people to abolish the criminalization of homosexuality among consenting adults. However, despite the existence of the law on the books, there had been no known prosecution of same-sex sexual activity according to the government.
Section 377 was added by the British in 1858 for its colonies. The law was inherited into Singapore in 1871, with 377A introduced into the Penal Code in 1938. In October 2007, during a Penal Code review, Singapore repealed Section 377 of the Penal Code, but 377A remained on the books as an unenforced law. On 29 November 2022, the Parliament of Singapore voted to repeal Section 377A in its entirety. It was officially repealed on 3 January 2023 and struck off the books.
Despite the abolition of sodomy as a crime, the Sexual Offences Act, 1957 set the age of consent for same-sex activities at 19, whereas for opposite-sex activities it was 16. This was rectified by the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act, 2007, which comprehensively reformed the law on sex offences to make it gender- and orientation-neutral, and set 16 as the uniform age of consent. In 2008, even though the new law had come into effect, the former inequality was retrospectively declared to be unconstitutional in the case of Geldenhuys v National Director of Public Prosecutions.
Bestiality was legalized at the same time as homosexuality, i.e. in 1944. It was again criminalized in 2014. "Nu blir det olagligt att ha sex med djur." Sveriges Radio. Retrieved 27 December 2020. The relevant legal provision is today found in Chapter 2, 10 § of the Swedish Animal Welfare Act of 2018: "It is forbidden to perform sexual acts with animals. The prohibition does not cover acts performed for veterinary reasons or in connection with breeding or for similar legitimate reasons." Violations of this provision is punishable with a fine or with imprisonment for a maximum of two years (Chapter 10, 2 § of the above Act). "Djurskyddslag (2018:1192)." Sveriges Riksdag. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
In Taiwan, the Criminal Code of the Republic of China officially focusing on sexual assaults. Article 10 defines anal intercourse to be a form of sexual intercourse, along with vaginal and oral intercourse. Article 277 set the age of consent at 16. Child and Youth Sexual Transaction Prevention Act Article 22 make it a criminal offense to engage in sexual contact with minors.
In the 1980s and 1990s, gay rights organizations made attempts to equalize the age of consent for heterosexual and homosexual activity, which had previously been 21 for homosexual activity but only 16 for heterosexual acts. Heterosexual sodomy, however, ironically remained illegal until the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill, although it was mainly applied in cases of anal rape. Efforts were also made to modify the "no other person present" clause so that it dealt only with minors. In 1994, Conservative MP Edwina Currie introduced as part of the 1994 bill an amendment which would have lowered the age of consent to 16. The amendment failed, but a compromise amendment which lowered the age of consent to 18 was accepted. 1 July 1997 decision in the case Sutherland v. United Kingdom resulted in the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000 which further reduced it to 16, and the "no other person present" clause was modified to "no minor persons present".
It was not until 2000, with the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000, that the age of consent for anal sex was reduced to 16 for men and women. In 2003, the Sexual Offences Act significantly reformed English law in relation to sexual offences, introducing a new range of offences relating to underage and non-consensual sexual activity that were concerned with the act that occurred, rather than the sex or sexual orientation of those committing it. Buggery in as much as it related to sexual intercourse with animals (bestiality) remained untouched until the Sexual Offences Act 2003, when it was replaced with a new offence of "intercourse with an animal".
Today, the universal age of consent is 16 in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Sexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 2008 brought Northern Ireland into line with the rest of the United Kingdom on 2 February 2009 (prior to that, the age of consent for both heterosexual and homosexual intercourse was 17). The three British Crown dependencies also have an equal age of consent at 16: since 2006, in the Isle of Man; since 2007, in Jersey; and since 2010 in Guernsey.
Sodomy is usually interpreted as referring to anal intercourse between two males or a male and a female. In England and Wales sodomy was made a felony by Henry VIII's Buggery Act 1533, which was part of the attack on the monasteries, though had been a crime punished by the clergy until 1534. The Buggery Act 1533 also criminalised sex with animals. Section 61 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861, entitled "Sodomy and Bestiality", defined punishments for "the abominable Crime of Buggery, committed either with Mankind or with any Animal". The punishment for those convicted was the death penalty until 1861 in England and Wales, and 1887 in Scotland. James Pratt and John Smith were the last two to be executed for sodomy in England in 1835.Cocks, Nameless Offences However, all homoerotic acts could be prosecuted under the 1533 law as they were all treated by the courts as "attempts" to commit the felony (sodomy) whether there had been an actual attempt to commit anal intercourse or not. This interpretation was in place by at least the 1690s.Cocks, Visions of Sodom Thereafter, it was possible to prosecute all homoerotic acts, invitations, or suggestions as "attempts" to commit the felony or conspiracies to arrange it. Between 1806, when reliable figures begin, and 1900, there were more than 8,000 cases of what were called "unnatural offences," including 404 capital sentences and 56 executions (all before 1835).H G Cocks, Visions of Sodom; Nameless Offences Some confusion over the state of the law and what it covered has resulted from the intervention of Henry Labouchere, who, in 1885 introduced a clause to the Criminal Law Amendment Act that outlawed "gross indecency" between men "in public and private." Many historians have assumed as a result that before that date homoerotic acts were not covered by the law, or were only prosecuted if committed in public. This is not the case. Labouchere's Amendment added nothing to the law except another way of describing what was already illegal.Cocks, Nameless Offences; Visions of Sodom; Following the Wolfenden report, sexual acts between two adult males, with no other people present, were made legal in England and Wales in 1967, in Scotland in 1980, Northern Ireland in 1982, Crown Dependency Guernsey in 1983, Jersey in 1990 and Isle of Man in 1992.
The definition of sodomy was not specified in these or any statute, but rather established by judicial precedent. Over the years the courts have defined buggery as including either:
At common law consent was not a defenceBecause consent was not required, heavier penalties require proof of lack of consent – see R v Sandhu 1997 Crim LR 288; R v Davies 1998 1 Cr App R (S) 252. nor was the fact that the parties were marriage. R v Jellyman (1838) 8 C & P 604. In the UK, the punishment for buggery was reduced from hanging to life imprisonment by the Offences against the Person Act 1861. As with the crime of rape, buggery required that penetration must have occurred, but ejaculation was not necessary. R v Reekspear (1832) 1 Mood CC 342; R v Cozins (1834) 6 C & P 351; the Offences against the Person Act 1861, §63.
]] Sodomy laws in the United States were largely a matter of state rather than federal jurisdiction, except for laws governing the US Armed Forces. In the 1950s, all states had some form of law criminalizing sodomy. In the early 1960s, the penalties for sodomy in the various states varied from imprisonment for two to ten years or a fine of US$2,000. Illinois became the first American jurisdiction to repeal its law against consensual sodomy in 1961; in 1962, the Model Penal Code recommended all states do so. In the 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision upholding Georgia's sodomy law, the United States Supreme Court ruled that nothing in the United States Constitution bars a state from prohibiting sodomy.
By 2002, 36 states had repealed all sodomy laws or had them overturned by court rulings. In 2003, only ten states had laws prohibiting all sodomy, with penalties ranging from 1 to 15 years imprisonment. Additionally, four other states had laws that specifically prohibited same-sex sodomy. On June 26, 2003, the US Supreme Court in a 6–3 decision in Lawrence v. Texas struck down the Texas same-sex sodomy law, ruling that this private sexual conduct is protected by the liberty rights implicit in the Due process of the United States Constitution, with Sandra Day O'Connor's concurring opinion arguing that they violated equal protection. This decision invalidated all state sodomy laws insofar as they applied to noncommercial conduct in private between consenting civilians.
The Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces has ruled that the Lawrence v. Texas decision applies to Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is a ban on sodomy in the US Armed Forces. In both United States v. Stirewalt and United States v. Marcum, the court ruled that the "conduct falls within the liberty interest identified by the Supreme Court", but went on to say that despite the application of Lawrence to the military, Article 125 can still be upheld in cases where there are "factors unique to the military environment" that would place the conduct "outside any protected liberty interest recognized in Lawrence." Examples of such factors could be fraternization, public sexual behavior, or any other factors that would adversely affect good order and discipline. Convictions for consensual sodomy have been overturned in military courts under the Lawrence precedent in both United States v. Meno. and United States v. Bullock. As of 2024, 12 states still had laws against consensual sodomy; in 2013, police in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, arrested gay men for "attempted crimes against nature" despite the law having been ruled unconstitutional and unenforceable.
The age of consent in Malaysia is 16. Punishment for voluntarily committing carnal intercourse against the order of nature shall be up to twenty years imprisonment and flagellation, while punishment for committing the same offence but without consent is punished by no less than five years imprisonment and whipping. There was a notable case involving Anwar Ibrahim, former Leader of the Opposition and deputy prime minister who was convicted of sodomy crime under Section 377B of the Penal Code. However, it is debatable whether or not the sodomy law can be enforced consistently.
In September 1995, Zimbabwe's parliament introduced legislation banning homosexual acts. In 1997, a court found Canaan Banana, Mugabe's predecessor and the first President of Zimbabwe, guilty of 11 counts of sodomy and indecent assault.
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