Sodomy Law: New Hampshire, March 16, 1680

death for sodomy

On March 16, 1680, legislators of New Hampshire passed the colony's first capital laws, copied almost word for word from the Plymouth laws of 1671:

If any man lie with mankind as he lies with a woman; both of them have committed abomination; They both shall surely be put to death: unless one party were forced, or were under fourteen years of age. And all other Sodomitical filthiness shall be severely punished according to the nature of it.(1)

This law was next revised in 1718.

 

 

References

  1. Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (NY: Harper & Row, 1983), p. 118-119 citing Albert Stillman Batcheller, ed., Laws of New Hampshire, Including Public and PrivateActsand Resolves and the Royal Commissions and Instructions, with Historical and Descriptive Notes . . . (Manchester, N.H.: John B. Clarke, 1904), vol. 1, pp. 11-13.