Colonial America: The Age of Sodomitical Sin, 1607-1783, by Jonathan Ned Katz

The years from 1607 to 1783 constitute the founding era of what became the United States. In the early years of this era, in these American colonies, the penalty for sodomy was death, and a number of executions are documented. Sodomy was usually conceived of then as anal intercourse between men. But why was sodomy thought of as treason against the state and punished so harshly? And what do we know of sexual and intimate relationships between women in these years, and the laws and responses to such intimacies? This feature presents or references the original documents that Jonathan Ned Katz collected in his books Gay American History (1976) and Gay/Lesbian Almanac (1983), along with evidence that others subsequently discovered. Published originally on OutHistory in 2012.

Buggery Law: Massachusetts, May 26, 1697

Death for "buggery"

After the Massachusetts Bay and the Plymouth colonies were joined as the Massachusetts Colony, a revision of the old Massachusetts Bay law of 1672 made a terminological change in the new sodomy statute. The crime was now called "buggery" with man or beast. It was still "detestable and abominable" but it was now also "contrary to the very Light of Nature" (hinting that "Nature" was playing a new, prominent role in legal philosophy). Unlike most earlier laws in which sodomy was distinguished from bestiality, the term "buggery" here applied to both kinds of contacts. And both still remained capital crimes. (1)

This Massachusetts "buggery" law, requiring death for the human participants and, in the case of bestiality, the execution and burning of the beast, was one of a series of provisions which also included acts against murder, rape, and "Atheism and Blasphemie" (the latter punished by "boring through the tongue with a red hot iron").

"An Act for the Punishment of Buggery" read:

For avoiding of the detestable and abominable Sin of Buggery with Mankind or Beast, which is contrary to the very Light of Nature; Be it Enacted and Declared ... That the same Offence be adjudged Felony.... And that every Man, being duly convicted of lying with Mankind, as he lieth with a Woman; and every Man or Woman that shall have carnal Copulation with any Beast or Brute Creature, the Offender and Offenders, in either of the Cases before mentioned, shall suffer the Pains of Death, and the Beast shall be slain and burnt.

This law remained in force until its revision in 1785.(2)

A law of 1805 abolished the death penalty for "Sodomy and Bestiality."

References

Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (NY: Harper & Row, 1983), p. 121-22, citing Acts and Laws, Passed by the Great and General Council or Assembly of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay in New England from 1692, to 1719 (London: J. Baskett, 1724), p. 110. Additional information on this law in Samuel Sewall, The Diary of . . . edited by M. Halsey Thomas, 2 vols. (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1973), vol. I, p. 380.
Perpetual Laws of. . . Massachusetts Up to 1789 (Boston: Adams and Nourse, 1789), p. 178.