Sodomy

Sodomy is a legal and historical label for particular sexual acts, most commonly anal and oral sex. Though the laws were often written broadly, they were enforced disproportionately against gay and bisexual men and used to justify arrest, blackmail, and discrimination. In the United States, sodomy laws remained in more than a dozen states until the Supreme Court struck them down in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), ruling that consensual intimacy between adults in private is protected under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That decision helped set the stage for later marriage-equality rulings. Internationally, similar laws still exist in dozens of countries and continue to be used to persecute LGBTQ+ people.