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.

Sodomy Law: Connecticut, December 1, 1642

Death for "man lying with man"

The General Court of Connecticut adopted a list of twelve capital crimes, all but the rape law based on theMassachusetts Bay Colony's Liberties of 1641.(1) The capital crimes in Connecticut were:

(1) idolatry

(2) witchcraft,

(3) blasphemy

(4) murder with malice aforethought

(5) murder through poisoning

(6) bestiality

(7) sodomy. Here referred to only as "man lying with man,"

(8) adultery

(9) rape

(10) kidnapping

(11) perjury with intent to cause a man to lose his life

(12) treason

This law was readopted in a codification of 1650, May.

References

Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (NY: Harper & Row, 1983), p 85, citing J. Hammond Trumbull, ed., The Public Records of the Colony Of Connecticut (Hartford: Lockwood and Brainard, 1850), vol. I, pp. 77-78; Mary Jeanne Anderson Jones, Congregational Commonwealth: Connecticut 1636-62 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1968), pp. 101-102.