Also known as: bugger · buggers · buggering · buggered · sodomy
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A common-law offense consisting of carnal copulation against nature. The conduct encompasses both anal contact between humans and sexual activity between a human and an animal.
Brian Bailey and Benjamin Brooks, two adult men, engaged in consensual anal intercourse inside a locked apartment. Police learned of the activity through an unrelated tip and charged them with buggery under a state statute. The trial court dismissed the charges because the conduct was private, noncommercial, and involved only consenting adults.
Bobby Brady was prosecuted for buggery after engaging in oral sex with another adult man in a private residence. The state court applied the longstanding common-law felony definition and affirmed the conviction under then-controlling precedent. The ruling treated the act as a crime against nature regardless of consent.
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Bernard Bass faced buggery charges arising from an alleged act with an animal on his property. His appointed lawyer had previously represented the complaining witness in a related matter. The conflict prevented effective cross-examination on the elements of the offense.
Byron Bishop was charged with buggery for forcing another adult male to engage in anal intercourse. The court rejected any argument that the offense required opposite-sex participants and applied the statute equally. The conviction rested on lack of consent rather than the nature of the act alone.
Bharat Bhatia was convicted of buggery decades earlier and later denied the right to vote under a state felon-disenfranchisement law. He argued the underlying offense was rooted in racial animus. The court examined whether the historical classification of buggery as a felony produced discriminatory effects.
Blue Horizon Industries employees reported that a local ordinance singled out buggery for special criminal penalties while leaving other private sexual conduct unregulated. The company and affected workers claimed the law reflected animus rather than any legitimate regulatory goal. The court evaluated whether the classification survived rational-basis review.
A statute that criminalizes private, consensual, noncommercial buggery between adults lacks a legitimate governmental objective. Moral disapproval alone cannot supply the required rational basis. The law therefore fails constitutional scrutiny and must be struck down.
Buggery covers both sodomy between humans and bestiality involving a human and an animal. Early English statutes treated the offense as a felony incorporated into American common law. The term functions as a synonym for crime against nature.
Moral disapproval of the conduct supplies no legitimate state interest sufficient to sustain a criminal prohibition. Courts apply rational-basis review and require an objective independent of mere disapproval. Prosecutions resting solely on that ground are unconstitutional.
…the right to privacy in Lawrence v. Texas , 539 U.S. 558 (2003), which struck down a Texas statute criminalizing homosexual sodomy. Lawrence relied on the position that criminal sodomy laws, like bans on contraceptives, invaded privacy by inviting “unwarranted government intrusions” that “touc[h] upon the most…