A Look at Homosexuality- specifically Sodomy Laws(LC)

  • The Age of Sodomitical Sin

    In the early years of this era, the penalty for sodomy was death, and a number of executions are documented. In Pennsylvania, the law was change to distinguish the punishment between black and white. The New law for whites was not capital and it was a life imprisonment. A separate act, passed the same day, dealt with "negros." The new act imposed the death penalty on Blacks guilty of "buggery,"Though the text is ambiguous, "buggery" here probably meant both "sodomy" and "bestiality".
  • The Buggery Law: South Carolina

    South Carolina legislators included the text of the English "buggery" law and its death penalty in a South Carolina statute, an explicit incorporation rare in the Southern-colonies. Usually the English buggery law was simply assumed to be operative.(1)
    This South Carolina buggery law of 1712 remained in effect for one hundred and sixty-one years, until 1873, when the death penalty was repealed.
  • Suffolk Inferior Court, Boston: Gray v. Pitts, July 26, 1771

  • Prison Sex and Solitary Confinement

    http://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/manion/essay
    Until 1790, sodomy was punishable by death.
  • The Post Revolution Period- 1776-1873

    A new sodomy law passed in 1812 reduced the maximum penalty from death to six months in solitary confinement, followed by 1-10 years at hard labor.10 In addition, the crime was reworded that men could commit the crime only with "any man or male child."
    https://www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/sensibilities/new_hampshire.htm