Existence of sodomy laws now that gay marriage is legal

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have faced legal proscription for hundreds of years, initially under religious laws, in particular those imposed by the Abrahamic faiths, and later under secular legal codes, often drawing heavily on the theological traditions that preceded them.

Texas. In practice the law was used broadly to prosecute intimacy between men when the act of sodomy could not be proven. Variations on IPC e. While anyone could technically be convicted under the act, it was same-sex convictions that were the most common. The new Act narrowed the offence to focus solely on male same-sex activity, still punishable by death.

The Act was subsequently adapted, modified and incorporated into the codes of various British colonies throughout Africa, the Caribbean and South Pacific over the next half-century. It was closely followed by the Napoleonic Code founded on the same principles.

Aside from the references found in the texts of antiquity, such as the story of Sodom and Gomorrah found in Genesis in the Bible, the first recorded references of criminalisation in English law date back to two medieval treatises: Fleta , written in Latin and Britton circa the start of the 14 th century, written in Norman French.

This made the penal code the first western law to decriminalise same-sex sexual activity since classical antiquity. In England, when King Henry VIII made his break with the Catholic Church, much of the former ecclesiastic law tried in the ecclesiastical courts had to be revised and incorporated into secular law to be tried by the state.

In , anti-sodomy laws became unconstitutional in the United States when the Supreme Court struck them down in Lawrence v. Crucially, the Act provided the foundation for the sodomy laws that were eventually exported around the world under British colonial rule over years later.

While the fight for LGBT equality is far from complete, the distance travelled, even in the last 50 years, is reason to be hopeful. Although briefly brought back to the ecclesiastical courts on the ascension to power of the Catholic Queen Mary in , the Act was reinstated by Queen Elizabeth in Only in , when the Act was repealed and replaced by the Offences Against the Person Act , did the offence focus solely on male same-sex activity.

It strongly influenced codes in other countries, helping to spread the model of a criminal code that did not criminalise same-sex activity. Other colonial legal traditions, such as the French Penal Code and later Napoleonic Code , which decriminalised same-sex sexual activity in , did not have the same long-lasting effect on the lives of LGBT people.

While these laws often targeted sexual acts between persons of the same sex, many sodomy-related statutes employed definitions broad enough to outlaw certain sexual acts between persons of different sexes, in some cases even including acts between married persons. Blasphemy, witchcraft, heresy, sacrilege, and sodomy were all omitted.

The treatises show that the common law at the time, tried in ecclesiastical rather than secular courts, saw sodomy as an offence against God with the punishment of being buried alive in the ground or burnt to death. Other traditions of criminalisation or censure, particularly those heavily influenced by Islam and other religions, are not interrogated in detail here.

Despite the long history of the criminalisation of LGBT people, the long arc of history bends inexorably toward justice. In , France introduced a new penal code predicated on the belief that private acts by private individuals were not a matter for state intervention. The high court’s longest serving justice wrote in a concurring opinion that the SCOTUS should now “reconsider” rulings in several past decisions, including those on sodomy and gay marriage.

As the European powers expanded their control and influence over much of the world, they took their legal systems and the laws criminalising LGBT people with them, imposing them over diverse indigenous traditions where same-sex activity and gender diversity did not always carry the same social or religious taboo.

The timeline also follows how this legacy of criminalisation has increasingly been undone, highlighting important milestones in the global, century-long struggle to achieve justice and equality before the law for LGBT people. The ruling deemed that such laws violated the right to liberty and privacy guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

This timeline gives an overview of this history of the criminalisation of LGBT people, tracing in particular the evolution of the specific forms of criminalisation that originated in Europe and which are the source of many of the laws that still blight the lives of LGBT people across the world today.

Despite the absence of laws criminalising same-sex relations in the above countries, many nevertheless imposed restrictions on LGBT people in other ways. Spain and Portugal, for example, adopted similar laws inspired by the Napoleonic Code in and respectively, until Spain re-criminalised in the midth century and Portugal in However, during their period of decriminalisation, these codes were exported to many Spanish and Portuguese colonies.

There are 12 states with "zombie" sodomy laws, meaning that if a Supreme Court case protecting gay sex is overturned, it would become illegal again. The last two men to be executed for same-sex acts in England, James Pratt and John Smith, were executed by hanging on 27 November It took until the landmark case, Navtej Singh Johar v.

The decision was a landmark moment for the gay rights movement, paving the way for the recognition of same-sex marriage as. As the Philadelphia Gay News previously reported, Obergefell v. Union of India , for the Indian Supreme Court unanimously to rule that the section was unconstitutional.

Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage in , is likely the next case to fall. The legacy of British colonial-era penal codes looms large in this history, informing many of these criminalising provisions. Following in the footsteps of the French Penal Code, the Napoleonic Code, introduced in full in , was adopted by most of the countries occupied by the French under Napoleon.

Legal codes first implemented in Europe proliferated during the colonial period.