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 and defined by many courts and jurisdictions to include any or all forms of sexual acts that are illegal, illicit, unlawful, unnatural and immoral. As of June , 61 countries as well as 3 sub-national jurisdictions [ a ] have laws that criminalize sexual activity between 2 individuals of the same-sex.
In 11 of them, sexual activity between two individuals of the same-sex is punishable with the death penalty. In March , the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women found that laws criminalizing consensual same-sex activity between women are a human rights violation. This case, brought by Rosanna Flamer-Caldera , was the first United Nations case to focus on lesbian and bisexual women.
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This is the earliest known law condemning the act of male-to-male intercourse in the military. In the Roman Republic , the Lex Scantinia which is first described in documents dating back to 50 BCE 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 permissible, as long as their partner was a male of lower social standing. Intolerance of same-sex acts appears to have intensified in the Roman Empire in the late 4th century; in the emperor Theodosius ordered that male prostitutes were to be publicly burned , although it is uncertain to what extent this decree was actually carried out.
In England , Henry VIII introduced the first legislation under English criminal law against sodomy with the Buggery Act , making buggery punishable by hanging , a penalty not lifted until Following Sir William Blackstone 's Commentaries on the Laws of England , [ 19 ] the crime of sodomy has often been defined only as the "abominable and detestable crime against nature", or some variation of the phrase.
