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 by courts to include any sexual act deemed to be unnatural or immoral. As of June , 69 countries as well as five sub-national jurisdictions [a] have laws criminalizing homosexuality.
Among these 69 countries, 44 of them criminalize not only male homosexuality but also female homosexuality. In 11 of them, homosexuality is punished with the death penalty. This is the earliest known law condemning the act of male-to-male intercourse in the military.
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In the Roman Republic , the Lex Scantinia 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. For adult male citizens to experience and act on homoerotic desire was considered natural and permissible, as long as their partner was a male of lower social standing.
Most sodomy related laws in Western civilization originated from the growth of Christianity during Late Antiquity. Starting in the s, the Roman Catholic Church launched a massive campaign against sodomites, especially homosexuals. In England , Henry VIII introduced the first legislation under English criminal law against sodomy with the Buggery Act of , making buggery punishable by hanging , a penalty not lifted until Following Sir William Blackstone 's Commentaries on the Laws of England , [15] 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. In Pietro Leopoldo of Tuscany , abolishing death penalty for all crimes, became not only the first Western ruler to do so, but also the first ruler to abolish death penalty for sodomy which was replaced by prison and hard labour.
