Sodomy is a legal term for oral or anal sexual contact between people, and under some statutes, sexual contact between a person and an animal. So what is sodomy in today’s law? It is a word still printed in roughly a dozen state criminal codes, but one the Supreme Court stripped of its power over consenting adults in Lawrence v. Texas (2003). The term still carries real legal weight in three places: cases involving force or minors, military and immigration proceedings, and background checks tied to older convictions.1Justia. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)
What the Word Covers in Modern Statutes
The common law definition was narrow, limited mostly to anal intercourse between men. When American legislatures rewrote their criminal codes in the twentieth century, most expanded the term well past that original scope. A typical modern statutory definition reaches any sexual act involving one person’s genitals and another person’s mouth or anus, without regard to the sex of either participant. Some codes group bestiality under the same heading or a closely related statute.
Courts for centuries used the phrase “crime against nature” instead of describing the conduct, a convention judges adopted because they refused to put specifics in open records.2Cornell Law Institute. Crime Against Nature That vagueness is why older statutes read the way they do, and why the definition a court would apply is the one written into the current state code, not the historical one.
Simple Versus Aggravated Sodomy
States that still address sodomy by name draw a hard line between two versions of the offense. Simple sodomy describes the act itself with no element of force. Aggravated sodomy requires one of two things: the act was committed through physical force or threats, or the victim was a young child, often under 10 or 12 depending on the jurisdiction. In states that keep the distinction, a spouse’s consent is not a defense to aggravated sodomy charges.
This boundary is the one that matters most for anyone trying to understand the current law. The aggravated version carries penalties comparable to rape, including potential life imprisonment in some jurisdictions. The Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling only protected consensual conduct between adults, so aggravated sodomy remains a fully enforceable, serious felony everywhere.
Why Consensual Sodomy Is No Longer a Crime
The constitutional status of sodomy laws turned twice in seventeen years. In Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), the Supreme Court upheld Georgia’s sodomy statute 5–4 after Atlanta police entered a man’s home on an unrelated matter and found him engaged in a sexual act with another man. The majority held that the Constitution does not protect a right to engage in sodomy and that the privacy of the home did not shield the conduct from prosecution.3Justia. Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986)
The Court reversed itself in Lawrence v. Texas (2003). Houston police had entered an apartment on a false weapons report and arrested two men under a Texas law criminalizing sexual contact between people of the same sex. The Court struck down the Texas statute and every similar law nationwide, holding that criminalizing private consensual sexual conduct between adults violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion said the government “cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.”4Library of Congress. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 The decision explicitly overruled Bowers.
Lawrence did not erase sodomy statutes from state codes. It made them constitutionally unenforceable against consenting adults. The laws remain printed in many criminal codes, but a prosecution for private, consensual conduct would be dismissed.
Why the Statutes Still Appear in State Codes
Roughly a dozen states still carry sodomy or “crimes against nature” statutes in their criminal codes. These so-called zombie laws persist for different reasons. Some legislatures have not prioritized repeal, others face political resistance, and a few lawmakers argue the statutes serve a backup purpose for prosecuting non-consensual acts or offenses involving minors, even though separate sexual assault statutes already cover that ground.
The presence of these laws creates practical problems. There are documented cases of law enforcement using the existence of a sodomy statute to justify arrests for conduct that was clearly consensual and constitutionally protected. The charges collapse in court, but the arrest can show up in background checks and cause lasting damage to employment, housing, and reputation.
The Dobbs Concurrence
The long-term durability of Lawrence became a live question after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Justice Thomas wrote a concurrence arguing that the Court should “reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” calling those decisions “demonstrably erroneous.”5Supreme Court of the United States. Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022) No other justice joined that concurrence, and the Dobbs majority opinion stated it was not disturbing other precedents. If the Court ever did overrule Lawrence, those zombie statutes could theoretically become enforceable again, which is why advocates continue pushing for legislative repeal rather than relying on court protection alone.
How Military Law Treats Sodomy
The military justice system handled sodomy separately from civilian law for decades. Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice made it a crime for any service member to engage in “unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal.”6GovInfo. 10 U.S.C. 925 – Art. 125. Sodomy Unlike civilian law after Lawrence, the military continued treating consensual sodomy as a chargeable offense for years.
Congress overhauled this framework through the Military Justice Improvement Act of 2016, with changes taking effect January 1, 2019. Article 125 was completely rewritten and redesignated as the kidnapping statute.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 925 – Art. 125. Kidnapping Non-consensual sexual acts that would previously have been charged as forcible sodomy are now prosecuted under Article 120, which covers rape and sexual assault broadly.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 920 – Art. 120. Rape and Sexual Assault Generally The military no longer has a sodomy-specific offense.
Consequences of a Historical Conviction
For anyone carrying a sodomy conviction, whether from before Lawrence or from one of the rare post-Lawrence arrests, the collateral effects can persist long after the criminal case ends. A conviction record, even for conduct now recognized as constitutionally protected, can create problems with employment background checks, professional licensing applications, and housing.
Sex offender registration is a particular concern. Under the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, offenses involving genital, oral, or anal penetration can qualify as registerable sex offenses. The federal standard does not require registration when both participants were consenting adults and neither held custodial authority over the other.9Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking. SORNA Current Law States have discretion to impose stricter rules, and some require registration for older convictions regardless of consent.
For non-citizens, a sodomy-related conviction classified as an aggravated felony under immigration law can result in deportation, permanent inadmissibility, and disqualification from most forms of immigration relief. Anyone dealing with a historical conviction should consult an attorney, because expungement or vacatur may be available depending on the jurisdiction and the circumstances of the case.