SODOMY - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

SODOMYAuthored

The Law Mind • 1142 words

Definition

A criminal offense historically defined as carnal copulation against the order of nature. At common law and under most early American statutes, sodomy encompassed sexual acts between men, sexual acts between a man and a woman performed in a manner deemed "unnatural," and sexual acts between a human being and an animal (the last sometimes separately charged as bestiality or buggery). The term served as an umbrella for a cluster of criminal prohibitions that varied widely in scope depending on jurisdiction and era.

Modern usage has largely disaggregated the term. Contemporary statutes—where they survive constitutional scrutiny—may define sodomy narrowly as anal intercourse, or broadly to include oral sex, or limit coverage to non-consensual acts only. In everyday legal and colloquial speech, the word's meaning is genuinely unstable. A researcher must determine what a particular statute or court meant by the term in the time and place under study.

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Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Any of several forms of sexual intercourse held to be unnatural, particularly bestiality or homosexuality, but also (sometimes) anal, oral, or manual sex; more narrowly, anal sex.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Carnal copulation in a manner against nature; buggery.

The gap between common and legal meaning is less about substance than about precision. Ordinary language uses "sodomy" loosely, often as a synonym for anal sex or, historically, for any same-sex act. Legal definitions were broader and stranger: courts debated at length whether oral copulation qualified, whether emission was required for the offense to be complete, and whether the act could be committed between husband and wife. A reader encountering "sodomy" in a statute or indictment cannot assume any particular act is meant without consulting the governing jurisdiction's case law and statutory text.

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Common Confusion

Three terms appear interchangeably in historical sources but carry distinct technical meanings in some jurisdictions:

SODOMY, BUGGERY, and BESTIALITY overlap substantially but are not identical. Buggery at English common law encompassed both anal intercourse between men and sexual acts with animals; some American courts used buggery and sodomy as synonyms, while others distinguished them. Bestiality refers specifically to sexual acts with animals and is sometimes treated as a separate offense. "Crime against nature" is the broadest label, functioning as a statutory heading under which sodomy, buggery, and related acts were grouped. A researcher finding any of these terms in a historical source must check whether the jurisdiction used them interchangeably or assigned them distinct scope.

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Why It Matters in Research

Constitutional transformation is the central research trap. Lawrence v. Texas (2003) held that criminal prohibitions on consensual private sexual conduct between adults violate the Due Process Clause, effectively invalidating the surviving sodomy statutes as applied to consenting adults. Any case, treatise, or encyclopedia entry predating 2003 must be read against this backdrop. Pre-Lawrence sources treat the criminality of consensual sodomy as settled; post-Lawrence sources operate in a fundamentally different constitutional environment. This is not a gradual evolution — it is a break, and corpus materials straddle it.

Definitional variance across jurisdictions is severe. Some states historically confined "sodomy" to anal intercourse; others extended it to oral sex; still others applied it to any sexual contact outside procreative heterosexual intercourse. Early indictments often charged "the infamous crime against nature" without specifying the act, and courts accepted this pleading as sufficient. A researcher analyzing historical prosecutions must reconstruct the operative definition from case law, not the statutory text alone.

The evidentiary history of the charge is peculiar. Anderson's Dictionary flags the observation — echoed in Blackstone — that the accusation was "so easily charged, and the negative so difficult to be proved." This concern runs through the historical sources and shaped special pleading and proof rules in sodomy prosecutions that have no parallel in other offenses.

Post-Lawrence, the term retains relevance in several research contexts: civil commitment and sex offender registration schemes that predated the constitutional shift, military law (which operates under a separate constitutional framework), non-consensual acts (where the offense survives as a form of sexual assault), and choice-of-law questions where parties or conduct crossed state lines during the period of active criminalization.

The word also carries heavy weight in equal protection and anti-discrimination litigation, where historical criminalization of same-sex conduct became evidence in constitutional arguments about the dignity and status of LGBTQ individuals.

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Historical Dictionary Support

The historical dictionaries converge on the core definition — carnal copulation against nature — but diverge on specifics in ways that matter. Black's first edition defines it cleanly and attributes the definition to the Georgia Code, illustrating that many American jurisdictions simply codified the common law formula. Anderson's is the most candid about the charge's practical dangers, quoting the "so dark a nature, so easily charged" language and noting the equivalence with bestiality and buggery. Bouvier's is the most technically detailed, addressing consent (both parties can be indicted even if both consented, and the act can be committed between husband and wife), and flagging an important limitation: penetration of the mouth was not sodomy under prevailing authority at the time of the edition.

This last point — that oral sex fell outside the historical definition — is historically important. Many twentieth-century statutes expanded the definition to include oral copulation expressly because the common law definition did not reach it. Researchers working with pre-expansion statutes or cases should not assume oral sex was covered.

Rapalje & Lawrence cross-references the offense under "crime against nature" and provides primary source citations without a substantive entry of its own, which is consistent with the historical practice of treating the offense as too well-known to require elaboration.

The 2nd edition of Black's entry reproduced here is a different term entirely (a data error in the source material), confirming that researchers cannot rely on pagination or edition numbering in historical reprints without verification.

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Jurisdictional Note

Thirteen states retained sodomy statutes that were invalidated by Lawrence v. Texas (2003); several others had repealed their statutes legislatively in the preceding decades. Some state sodomy statutes were drafted to apply only to same-sex conduct (class targeted laws), while others applied facially to all persons. This distinction mattered in the constitutional litigation and continues to matter in civil rights and damages claims arising from pre-Lawrence prosecutions. Military sodomy prohibitions under the Uniform Code of Military Justice have been subject to separate litigation and reform.

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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Lawrence v. Texas and Sexual Privacy Rights; History of Criminal Regulation of Sexual Conduct; Buggery and the Common Law

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SODOMYmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

The crime against nature; Scarnal copulation, against the order of nat- ure, by man with man, or in the same un- natural manner with woman, or with a beast. Code Ga. § 4352.

SODOMYmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

ed together for any mutual or common purpose. In a wider sense, the community or public; the people in general. See New York County Medical Ass'n v. New York, 32 Misc. Rep. 116, 65 N. Y. Supp. 5381; Josey v. Union L. & T. Co., 106 Ga. 608, 32 S. E. 628; Gilmer v. Stone,-120 U. S. 586, 7 Sup. Ct. 689, 30 L. Ed. 734. Socii mei socius meus socius non est. The partner of my partner is not my partner. Dig. 50, 17, 47, 1. In criminal law. The crime of unnatural sexual connection; so named from its prevalence in Sodom. See Genesis, xix. This term is often defined in statutes and judicial decisions as meaning “the crime against nature,” the ‘“‘crimen innominatum,” or as carnal copulation, against the order of nature, by man with man, or, in the same unnatural manner, with woman or with a beast. See Cr. Code Ga. § 4352; Honselman v. People, 168 Ill. 172, 48 N. E. do4. But, strictly speaking, it should be used only as equivalent to “pederasty,” that is, the sexual act as performed by a man upon the person of another man or a boy bY. cee: of the anus. See Ausman v. eal, 10 Ind. 345, 71 Am. Dec. 331. The term might also, without any great violence to its original meaning, be so extended as to cover the same act when performed in the same manner by a man upon the person of a woman. Another possible method of unilateral sexual connection, by penetration of the mouth (penem in orem alii immittere, vel penem ali in orem recipere) is not properly called “sodomy,” but “fellation.” That this does not constitute sodomy within the meaning of a statute is held in Harvey v. State, 55 Tex. Cr. App. 199, 115 S. W. 1198; Com. v. Poindexter (Ky) 118 S. W. 948: Lewis v. State, 36 Tex. Cr. R. 37, 35 S&S. W. 372, 61 Am. St. Rep. 831. On the other hand bestiality is the carnal copulation of a human being with a brute, or animal of the sub-human orders, of the opposite sex. It is not identical with sodomy, nor is it a form of sodomy, though the two terms are often confused in legal writings and sometimes in statutes. See Ausman v. Veal, 10 Ind. 355, 71 Am. Dee. 331. Buggery is a term rarely used in statutes, but apparently including both sodomy (in the widest sense) and bestialitv as above defined. See Ausman v. Veal, 10 Ind. 355, 71 ty Dec. 331; Com. v. J., 21 Pa. Co. Ct. R.

SODOMYmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888

CRIME AGAINST NATURE, (defined). 10 Ind. 355. CRIMEN.-Crime (q. v.) Also an accusation or charge of crime. CRIMEN FALSI.-Anciently, the fraudulent affixing the seal of the court to any purported legal process, e. g. signing writs or charters with the king's seal, or a summons with the seal of the county court; hence, in more modern parlance, the crime of forgery (q. v.) 29 Ohio St. 351, 358. (what included). 55 Ala. 239, 242; (distinguished from "infamous crime"). 4 Sawy. (U. S.) 211. CRIMINAL CASES, (defined). 68 III. 372; 39 Iowa 435; 26 Mich. 424. (what are). T. U. P. Charlt. (Ga.) (what are not). 26 Mich. 22; 14 Ga. 175, 181. 354. (in city ordinance). 26 Mich. 422.

SODOMYn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

Carnal copulation in a manner against nature; buggery. Gen. xix. 5.

sodomynoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

Any of several forms of sexual intercourse held to be unnatural, particularly bestiality or homosexuality, but also (sometimes) anal, oral, or manual sex. | Anal sex.

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