Also known as: sodomies · sodomize · sodomized · sodomizing · sodomist · buggery
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
Oral or anal copulation between humans, especially those of the same sex, or between a human and an animal.
Campus police entered Skylar Sullivan and Selena Singh's locked dormitory room after a noise complaint and discovered the two adults engaged in private consensual intimacy. Prosecutors charged them under a state statute criminalizing same-sex sodomy. The defendants moved to dismiss, arguing that the statute lacked any legitimate governmental objective and rested solely on moral disapproval of their conduct.
Stephen Shaw and Simon Stern were discovered by police in Shaw's apartment engaged in consensual adult intimacy. Authorities sought to prosecute under a longstanding sodomy statute that had previously been upheld. The defendants challenged the charges by asserting that the law intruded on protected personal liberty without a valid state interest.
In August 1982, respondent Michael Hardwick was charged with violating the Georgia statute criminalizing sodomy by committing that act with another adult male in the bedroom of respondent's home. After a preliminary hearing, the District Attorney decided not to present the matter to the grand jury unless further evidence developed. Hardwick, who identified as a practicing homosexual, then brought suit in the Federal District Court challenging the constitutionality of the statute insofar as it criminalized consensual sodomy. He asserted that the Georgia sodomy statute, as administered by the defendants, placed him in imminent danger of arrest. The District Court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, relying on Doe v. Commonwealth's Attorney for the City of Richmond, which the Supreme Court had summarily affirmed. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed. The appellate court held that the Georgia statute violated respondent's fundamental rights because his homosexual activity is a private and intimate association beyond the reach of state regulation by reason of the Ninth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It remanded for trial. John and Mary Doe were also plaintiffs in the action. They alleged that they wished to engage in sexual activity proscribed by the statute in the privacy of their home and that they had been chilled and deterred from engaging in such activity by both the existence of the statute and Hardwick's arrest. The District Court held that because they had neither sustained, nor were in immediate danger of sustaining, any direct injury from the enforcement of the statute, they did not have proper standing to maintain the action. The Court of Appeals affirmed that dismissal. The Georgia statute at issue, Ga. Code Ann. § 16-6-2, provides that a person commits the offense of sodomy when he performs or submits to any sexual act involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another. A person convicted shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than twenty years. Because other Courts of Appeals had arrived at judgments contrary to that of the Eleventh Circuit, the Supreme Court granted the Attorney General's petition for certiorari questioning the holding that the sodomy statute violates the fundamental rights of homosexuals.
View caseSpencer Silver and Simone Sanders faced charges after officers entered their hotel room and observed private consensual conduct between the two adults. Defense counsel argued that the sodomy statute implicated fundamental liberty interests in intimate personal decisions. The court evaluated whether the prohibition could survive constitutional scrutiny under established due process standards.
Sentinel Security employees were investigated after a coworker reported private consensual conduct between two adult colleagues in a company apartment. Prosecutors applied a sodomy statute that treated same-sex acts differently from opposite-sex acts. The defense contended that enforcement raised equal protection concerns tied to the statute's selective application.
Sapphire Technologies executives urged local authorities to pursue sodomy charges against two adult employees after discovering private consensual videos on company devices. Prosecutors considered seeking the death penalty under an expansive reading of the statute. The defense moved to bar the extreme penalty on the ground that the conduct did not involve harm to minors or nonconsenting victims.
Sterling Manufacturing employees distributed materials depicting adult consensual conduct and faced prosecution under a sodomy-related obscenity statute. The government argued that the commercial element removed any privacy protection. The defendants responded that the underlying conduct remained private and consensual between adults.
A statute criminalizing private consensual same-sex sodomy between adults violates the Due Process Clause when the state lacks any legitimate governmental objective beyond moral disapproval. The law fails even rational basis review because bare moral condemnation supplies no valid interest that can justify criminal punishment. Courts therefore strike down such statutes as applied to fully consenting adults acting in private without commercial elements or harm to others.
Rational basis review applies to challenges against sodomy statutes targeting adult consensual conduct. The state must identify a legitimate governmental objective that the prohibition actually advances. Moral disapproval alone does not satisfy this requirement and causes the statute to fail constitutional scrutiny.
An institutional setting such as a dormitory or hotel room does not remove constitutional protection when the conduct remains private, consensual, noncommercial, and between adults. Limited third-party access for maintenance or service does not convert the space into a public forum or supply a legitimate state interest sufficient to justify criminalization. The Due Process Clause continues to bar prosecution based solely on moral disapproval.
…"mankind" in Act of 1533 as including women and girls). Nineteenth-century commentators similarly read American sodomy, buggery, and crime-against-nature statutes as criminalizing certain relations between men and women and between men and men. See, e. g. , 2 J. Bishop, Criminal Law § 1028 (1858); 2 J. Chitty,…