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Sodomy ( ) is a term used today predominantly in law (derived from traditional Christian usage) to describe the act of anal intercourse, oral intercourse, or bestiality.


The term comes from the Ecclesiastical Latin: peccatum Sodomiticum, or "sin of Sodom."

The association of the ancient city of Sodom with sexual depravity is of biblical origin. In the Book of Genesis (chapters 18-20), the Lord perceives Sodom and Gomorrah as places of grave sinfulness and seeks to discover whether this perception is really true before He destroys the inhabitants. Two angels (who have the appearance of humans) are sent to find out the reality of life in Sodom. After arriving in the city in the evening, the angels are invited - then urged strongly - by Lot (an upright man) to take refuge with his family for the night.

:(Genesis 19:4-11, KJV)

To summarise the above account:

The men of the city of Sodom desired that Lot give them the two men so that they may "know them," which has been interpreted either to mean "interrogate" or "to engage in sexual intercourse." Lot refuses to hand them over, and (going outside) offers his two virgin daughters instead. This offer is refused, and after the men press upon Lot and come near to break down the door, the two angels draw Lot back into the house and shut the door. They cause blindness to come upon the men of the city, thus bringing safety to those within the house. Even in their blinded state, the men outside still try to gain entry to the house and continue until they become wearied. We see here the extent of either their depravity or lack of hospitality, depending upon how one interprets the verses.

Sodom is subsequently destroyed by a rain of sulfur and fire. From this biblical narrative, the word 'Sodomy' is derived. It has come to be synonymous with anal intercourse (particularly between two males) and sometimes also to describe human-animal sexual intercourse (also known as bestiality or zoophilia); this is the primary meaning of the cognate German language word Sodomie.

In current usage, the term is particularly used in law. Sodomy laws prohibiting such sexual activity have been a standard feature of codes of sexual morality in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic civilisations (see below) as well as many other cultures . In the various criminal codes of United States of Americamarker, the term "sodomy" has generally been replaced by "Deviant sexual intercourse", which is precisely defined by statute. These laws have been challenged and have sometimes been found unconstitutional or have been replaced with different legislation. Some countries, particularly in Africa, the Middle East and southern Asia retain "sodomy laws" against homosexual acts. Elsewhere, the legal use of the term "sodomy" is restricted to rape cases where an act such as anal penetration has taken place.The English term "buggery" is closely related to sodomy in concept, and often interchangeably used in law and popular speech. In some legal systems, the term "buggery" is used rather than "sodomy". Examples include that of Saint Luciamarker, which despite calls for reform retains a penalty of 25 years in prison for anal intercourse between consenting adults.


In the Hebrew Bible, Sodom was a city destroyed by God because of the evil of its inhabitants. The clearest texts on the sin or sins which Sodom was destroyed for are found in Ezekiel in the Old Testament, and Jude in the New.

Hebrew references

The story of the Sodom's destruction — and of Abraham's failed attempt to intercede with God and prevent that destruction — appears in Genesis 18–19. No specific sin is given as the reason for God's great wrath.

The connection between Sodom and homosexuality is derived from the depicted attempt of a mob of city people to rape Lot's male guests; the sinfulness of that, for the original writers of the Biblical account, might have consisted mainly in the rape and the violation of the obligations of hospitality rather than the homosexuality as such. (In The Book of Judges, 19, there is an account, similar in many ways, where a city is destroyed in punishment for a mob of its inhabitants raping a woman.)

Many times in the Pentateuch and Prophets, writers use God's destruction of Sodom to demonstrate His awesome power. This happens in Deuteronomy 29, Isaiah 1, 3, and 13, Jeremiah 49 and 50, Lamentations 4, Amos 4.11, and Zephaniah 2.9. Deuteronomy 32, Jeremiah 23.14 and Lamentations 4 reference the sinfulness of Sodom but do not specify any particular sin. Specific sins which Sodom is linked to include adultery and lying ( ), impenitence ( , careless living ( ), fornication ( KJV), and an overall "filthy" lifestyle ( ), which word ("aselgeiais") elsewhere is rendered in the KJV as lasciviousness ( ; ; ; ; , or wantonness: ( ; ).

In Ezekiel 16, a long comparison is made between Sodom and the Kingdom of Israel. "Yet you have not merely walked in their ways or done according to their abominations; but, as if that were too little, you acted more corruptly in all your conduct than they." (Ezekiel 16.47 New American Standard Bible)

There is no explicit mention of any sexual sin in Ezekiel's summation, though sensuality is often concomitant with such affluence and ease, and "abomination" is used to describe same-sex sexual activity in Leviticus. However, it is also used to describe many other sins as well.


The Authorized King James Version translates as "There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel," but the word corresponding to "sodomite" in the Hebrew original, Qadesh (Hebrew:קדש) does not refer to Sodom, and has been translated in the New International Version as "shrine prostitute"; male shrine prostitutes may have served barren women in fertility rites rather than engaging in homosexual acts; this also applies to other instances of the word sodomite in the King James Version.

New Testament


The Greek word in the New Testament from which the phrase is translated "indulging in gross immorality", or in some Bibles, "giving themselves over to fornication", is "ekporneuō" ("ek" and "porneuō"). As one word it is not used elsewhere in the New Testament, but occurs in the Septuagint to denote whoredom (Genesis 38:24 and Exodus 34:15). Some modern translations as the NIV render it as "sexual immorality."

The Greek words for "strange flesh" are "heteros", which most always basically denotes "another/other," and "sarx," a common word for "flesh," and usually refers to the physical body or the nature of man or of an ordinance.

Views prior to the Medieval period

Jewish views

neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw this. (KJV, ).

Classical Jewish texts are seen by many as not stressing the homosexual aspect of the attitude of the inhabitants of Sodom as much as their cruelty and lack of hospitality to the "stranger." The 13th-century Jewish scholar Nachmanides wrote, “According to our sages, they were notorious for every evil, but their fate was sealed for their persistence in not supporting the poor and the needy.” His contemporary Rabbenu Yonah expresses the same view: “Scripture attributes their annihilation to their failure to practice tzedakah [charity or justice].” The Book of Wisdom, which is included in the Biblical canon by Orthodox and Roman Catholics, but excluded by modern Jews, Protestants, and other Christian denominations, makes reference to the story of Sodom, further emphasizing that their sin had been failing to practice hospitality:

For the Sodomites did not receive those, whom they knew not when they came: but these brought friends into bondage, that had well deserved of them. (KJV, Wisdom 19:13-14)

Prohibitions on same-sex activities among men (#157) and bestiality (#155-156) 613_commandments#Maimonides.27_list are among the 613 commandments as listed by Maimonides in the 12th century; however, their source in Leviticus 18 does not contain the word sodomy. The idea that homosexual intercourse was involved as at least a part of the evil of Sodom arises from the story in Genesis 19
That is the NIV translation. The Hebrew verb used is to know, which can have a sexual meaning in the Bible, but doesn't always, and might have a sexual meaning here, judging from Lot's shocked reaction:

First century Christian and Jewish opinions

Modern English translation of Jude

The Epistle of Jude in the New Testament echoes the Genesis narrative and potentially adds the sexually immoral aspects of Sodom's sins: …just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire (v. 7, English Standard Version). The phrase rendered sexual immorality and unnatural desire is translated strange flesh or false flesh, but it is not entirely clear what it refers to.

  • The ESV translators situated in the year 2001 supply one plausible paraphrase for "false flesh", arguably influenced by more recent Christian views, in making the phrase refer to alleged illicit sexual activity of the Genesis account (cf. the language of the epistle to the Romans 1:21-32 not specifically referring to Sodom).

  • Another theory is that it is just a reference to the “strange flesh” of the intended rape victims, who were angels, not men. Countering this is traditional interpretation, which notes that the angels were sent to investigate an ongoing regional problem(Gn. 18) of fornication, and extraordinarily so, that of a homosexual nature, "out of the order of nature." "Strange" is understood to mean "outside the moral law", ( ; ) while it is doubted that either Lot or the men of Sodom understood that the strangers were angels at the time.

  • A third opinion takes "false flesh" to refer to cannibalism, as such a meaning is used elsewhere in the Mosaic laws, referring to practices of those who lived in Canaan. A counter argument to this principally relies upon the weight of the sexual content versus cannibalism in the story of Sodom in , and "ekporneuō" to convey sexual content in Jude v.7.






Islamic views

The Qur'an makes a more explicit scriptural connection between homosexual aggression and Sodom. The city name ‘Sodom’ does not appear there, but the Sodomites are referred to as “the people of Lut (Lot).” Lot is the nephew of the Hebrew/Arabic patriarch Abraham and, in the Judaic Sodom stories, is head of the only family allowed by God to survive Sodom's destruction. In the Qur'an, he is also the divinely appointed national prophet to his people. Since their national name was unrecorded and “people of Lot” was the only available designation, the Islamic equivalent of ‘sodomy’ has become ‘liwat,’ which could be roughly translated as “lottishness” (see Homosexuality and Islam), and to this day the term لوطي lūṭiy (literally meaning "of Lot's people") is used as a highly-derogatory and religiously-charged term for gay men in Arabic.

According to Islamic view, homosexuality is not a natural activity and it was initiated under the influence of Satan among the people who dwelled in Sodom and Gomorrah. In order that they should abandon this immorality, Allah had sent to them Lut as a Prophet. The Qur'an relates,

'We also (sent) Lut: he said to his people: "Do ye commit lewdness such as no people in creation (ever) committed before you? For ye practice your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds".' - Quran 7:80-81

It is evident from this verse that the sin of the Sodomites was indeed homosexuality (specifically, amongst men) in the Islamic context.

Although the sin of the Sodomites was homosexuality, Islamic law makes it reasonably clear that most of the various other forms of sodomy in the Jewish and Christian branches of the tradition, such as anal sex with any partner (male or female) is also forbidden.

Medieval Christianity on sodomy

Justinian I and Byzantine power politics of late antiquity

The primarily sexual meaning of the word sodomia for Christians did not evolve before the 500s AD. Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, in his novels no. 77 (dating 538) and no. 141 (dating 559) amended to his Corpus iuris civilis, and declared that Sodom's sin had been specifically same-sex activities and desire for them. He also linked "famines, earthquakes, and pestilences" upon cities as being due to "such crimes", during a time of recent earthquakes and other disasters (see Extreme weather events of 535–536). It is understood by some that he was able to use the anti-homosexual laws he enacted upon personal as well as political opponents in case he could not prove them guilty of anything else.

Justinian's were not the first Roman laws prohibiting homosexual behavior. Earlier such measures had been included in the Lex Scantinia dating from 149 BC and the Lex Julia dating from 17 BC, both constituting the death penalty for homosexual behavior. Allegations exist that even before Lex Scantinia such laws existed, but direct evidence of these laws has been lost. While adhering to the death penalty by beheading as punishment for homosexuality or adultery, Justinian's legal novels heralded a change in Roman legal paradigm in that he introduced a concept of not only mundane but also divine punishment for homosexual behavior. Individuals might ignore and escape mundane laws, but they could not do the same with divine laws, if Justinian declared his novels to be such.

Christians earlier than Justinian are also seen to denounce same-sex relations. St. John Chrysostom in the fourth century regarded such as worse than murder in his fourth homily on Romans 1:26,27 [742281], while Paul the Apostle in the Epistle to the Romans referred to same sex relations as "shameful lust" and which acts were contrary to nature, with men suffering a "due penalty" in their bodies. Just like the Jews, early Christians prior to Justinian I are not known to have used the word sodomia for the carnal sin they abhorred, though Philo of Alexandria (20 BC - 50 AD) and Methodius of Olympus (AD 260-312) attributed homosexual relations to Sodom, as may have Josephus, (AD 37 – c. 100) Augustine of Hippo, (AD 354-430) and certain pseudepigraphacal texts.

Benedictus Levita and the Pseudo-Isidore






Medieval Inquisition, hereticism, and witchcraft


This came about with the Medieval Inquisition in 1184. It was then that a convenient target was found in the sects of Cathars and Waldensians, and these heretics were not only persecuted for alleged satanism but were increasingly accused of fornication and sodomy. In 1307, accusations of sodomy and homosexuality were major charges levelled during the Trial of the Knights Templar. Some of these charges were specifically directed at the Grand Master of the order, Jacques de Molay. It is this event, which led into the medieval and early-modern witch hunts that were also largely connoted with sodomy.

Persecution of Cathars and the Bogomiles sect in Bulgariamarker led to the use of a term closely related to sodomy: buggery derives from French bougge­rie, meaning "of Bulgaria".


Sodomy in Europe since the Age of Reason

From the Age of Reason onwards, Justinian's claim that sexual sins, if not persecuted yielded epidemics, natural disasters, and downfall of the state found a fruitful reception in pseudo-scientific ideologies of alleged pathology (such as in the popular concept of moral insanity) and mental as well as social and political consequences of sexual deviance.

Examination of trials for rape and sodomy during the eighteenth century at the Old Baileymarker in London show the treatment of rape to have been lenient, while the treatment of sodomy to have been generally severe. From the 1780s the number of cases grew, and sodomy was made a capital crime. Blackmail for sodomy also increased.

In France in the eighteenth century, sodomy was still theoretically a capital crime, and there are a handful of cases where sodomites were executed. However, in several of these, other crimes were involved as well (for instance, one man, Pascal, had supposedly murdered a man who resisted his advances). Records from the Bastille and the police lieutenant d'Argenson, as well as other sources, show that many who were arrested were exiled, sent to a regiment, or imprisoned in places (generally the Hospital) associated with moral crimes such as prostitution. Of these, a number were involved in prostitution or had approached children, or otherwise gone beyond merely having homosexual relations. Ravaisson (a 19th century writer who edited the Bastille records) suggested that the authorities preferred to handle these cases discreetly, lest public punishments in effect publicize "this vice".

Periodicals of the time sometimes casually named known sodomites, and at one point even suggested that sodomy was increasingly popular. This does not imply that homosexuals necessarily lived in security - specific police agents, for instance, watched the Tuileriesmarker, even then a known cruising area. But, as with much sexual behaviour under the Old Regime, discretion was a key concern on all sides (especially since members of prominent families were sometimes implicated) - the law seemed most concerned with those who were the least discreet.

Between 1730 and 1733, the Netherlandsmarker experienced a sodomy hysteria, in which 276 men were executed.

Modern Christian views

The traditional interpretation sees the primary sin of Sodom as being homoerotic sexual acts, connecting the Sodom narrative with Leviticus 18, which lists various sexual crimes, which, according to verses 27 and 28, would result in the land being “defiled”:




The primary word in contention is the Hebrew word yâda‛ used for know in the Old Testament. Biblical scholars disagree on what "know" in this instance refers to, but most of conservative Christianity interprets it to mean "sexual intercourse", while the opposing position interprets it to mean "interrogate." Lot's offering of his two virgins has been interpreted to mean that Lot is offering a compromise to assure the crowd that the two men have no untoward intentions in town, or that he is offering his virgins as a substitute for the men to "know" by sexual intercourse.

Those who oppose the interpretation of sexual intent toward Lot's guests point out that there are over 930 occurrences of the Hebrew word (yâda‛) for "know" in the Old Testament, and its use to denote sexual intercourse only occurs about a dozen times, and in the Septuagint it is not rendered sexually. Countering this is the argument that that most of the uses of yâda‛ denoting sex is in Genesis, (including once for premarital sex: Genesis 38:26), and in verse 8 sex the obvious meaning. Its use in the parallel story in Judges 19 is also invoked in support of this meaning, with it otherwise providing the only instance of "knowing" someone by violence.

Sodomy laws in the United States

From the earliest times in the United States, sodomy (variously defined) was prohibited, although some historians suggest that early sodomy laws were mainly used to address issues of non-consensual behavior, or public behavior. The earliest known United States law journal article dealing with sodomy was in 1905 in West Virginia. Attorney E.D. Leach argued that "perverted sexual natures" were related to crime. "Sodomy, rape, lust-murder, bodily injury, theft, robbery, torture of animals, injury to property and many other crimes may be committed under these conditions." 18th and 19th century judges often editorialized about the act of sodomy as they handed down their rulings. "That most detestable sin", the "horrid act", "the horrible crime", "that which is unfit to be named among Christians" characterized some of the language used by British and American jurists when punishing sodomites. Emphasis is usually on the notion that the act of anal penetration is so offensive "to God almighty" that the term Sodomy (literally, that which occurred in Sodom) is the only appropriate way of designating the activity. In other words, it was understood that when reference was made to "an unspeakable act" having occurred, it was clear that the act in question was none other than anal penetration. Some say, however, that the "Sin of Sodom" accurately referred not to anal penetration but rather to the agglomeration of ALL the unholy activities said to have occurred in Sodom and that it is thus inaccurate to imply a one-to-one relationship.

In the 1950s, all states had some form of law criminalizing sodomy, and in 1986 the United States Supreme Court ruled that nothing in the United States Constitution bars a state from prohibiting sodomy. However, state legislators and state courts had started to repeal or overturn their sodomy laws, beginning with Illinois in 1961, and thus in 2003, only 10 states had laws prohibiting all sodomy, with penalties ranging from 1 to 15 years imprisonment. Additionally, four other states had laws that specifically prohibited same-sex sodomy. That year the United States Supreme Court reversed its 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick ruling and in Lawrence v. Texas, invalidated these laws as being an unconstitutional violation of privacy, with Sandra Day O'Connor's concurring opinion arguing that they violated equal protection. See Sodomy law.

In the U.S. military, the United States Army Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled that the Lawrence v. Texas decision applies to Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the statute banning sodomy. In both United States v. Stirewalt and United States v. Marcum, the court ruled that the "conduct falls within the liberty interest identified by the Supreme Court." However, the court went on to say that despite Lawrence's application to the military, Article 125 can still be upheld in cases where there are "factors unique to the military environment" which would place the conduct "outside any protected liberty interest recognized in Lawrence." Examples of such factors could be fraternization, public sexual behavior, or any other factors that would adversely affect good order and discipline.


Evolution of the term in other languages

In modern French, the word “sodomie” (and in modern Spanish, the word “sodomía”) is used exclusively for penetrative anal sex (where the penetration is performed with a penis or a substitute of similar shape such as a dildo, possibly a strap-on dildo, thus any gender can be on the giving or receiving end). The matching French verb is "sodomiser" (Spanish "sodomizar").In modern German, the word “Sodomie” has no connotation of anal or oral sex, and refers specifically to zoophilia. (See Paragraph 175 StGB, version of June 28, 1935.) The same goes for the Norwegianmarker word “sodomi” and the Polishmarker "sodomia". “Sodomy”, therefore, can be considered a 'false friend,' a word that English speakers will think they know the meaning of, but which actually holds a different, though in this case related, meaning. Responsible for this was the broadening of the term sodomia by Benedictus Levita (see above).

Popular use

See also


  1. sodomy laws
  2. e.g. New York State Penal Law, Article 130, "Deviant Sexual Intercourse". The definition in this particular instance is as follows- "Deviant sexual intercourse means sexual conduct between persons not married to each other consisting of contact between the penis and the anus, the mouth and the penis or the mouth and the vulva".[1].
  4. [Sodomy Laws around the World]
  5. Oxford English Dictionary: Buggery- "2.Sodomy. Also Bestiality."
  6. The Inhospitable Sodomites
  7. Tzedakah Activists vs. Sodomites, Shema Yisrael Torah Network
  8. Boswell, p. 97
  9. Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible
  10. Vincent's Word Studies
  12. Word pictures in the New Testament, Archibald Thomas Robertson
  13. Gill, Gn. 19
  14. The works of Philo a contemporary of Josephius Page 528
  17. Article on struprum cum mastulo by W. Kroll in Pauly-Wissowa (ed.), Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, 1921
  18. On supplicium fustuarium, public beating to death for same-sex behavior in Rome long before Lex scantinia, see Polybios, The Histories, volume VI, chapter 37
  19. See article Päderastie by M. H. E. Meier in Ersch & Gruber (eds.), Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste
  20. Theodor Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht, 1899, p. 703f (in English as Roman Criminal Law)
  21. Wilhelm Rein, Das Criminalrecht der Römer von Romulus bis auf Justinianus ("Roman Criminal Law from Romulus up to Justinian I"), 1844, p. 864
  22. Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg, Tabu Homosexualität - Die Geschichte eines Vorurteils ("The taboo of homosexuality: The history of a prejudice"), 1978, p. 187
  23. Jewish philosopher, Writing on the life of Abraham
  24. Commentary on the sin of Sodom
  25. Antiquities 1.11.1
  27. Confessions. Commenting on the story of Sodom from Genesis 19
  28. Testament of Benjamin; Concerning a Pure Mind, 9:1
  29. Testament of Naphtali, 3.5
  30. Book of the Secrets of Enoch (Slavonic Apocalypse of) 10:4; in J recension Ch. I.118 (late 1st cent. AD)
  32. Encyclopedia Britannica 11th ed. "Knights Templar"
  33. Oxford English Dictionary
  39. John J. McNeil, the Church and the Homosexual, p. 50
  40. Homosexuality and the Old Testament, P. Michael Ukleja
  42. Dr. James B. DeYoung, Homosexuality, pp. 118-122
  43. U.S. v. Stirewalt
  44. U.S. v. Marcum
  45. United States v. Meno, United States Court of Criminal Appeals

Further reading

  • Robert Purks Maccubbin (Ed.), Tis Nature's Fault: Unauthorized Sexuality During the Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 1988)
  • Mark D. Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
  • Richard B. Hays (2004), The Moral Vision of the New Testament (London: Continuum). pg. 381
  • John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (University Of Chicago Press; 8th Edition. edition, 2005).
  • Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization (Belknap Press, 2003)

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