Buggery

Buggery is an old legal term for anal intercourse (and, historically, sex with animals). In England it became a capital crime under the Buggery Act of 1533, passed during the reign of Henry VIII, which moved prosecution from church courts to the state and set death as the penalty. Because it was applied to sex between men, the law and its successors became a central tool for criminalizing gay male life in Britain and across the British Empire, where versions of it still shape some laws today. The death penalty for it was removed in 1861, and the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 finally decriminalized private consensual sex between men in England and Wales. Knowing this history helps explain the long legal roots of homophobia.