In 2014 a bill to legalise same sex relationships in Louisiana was rejected and 17 states have still yet to formally repeal their laws – despite the Supreme Court ruling in Texas. Same-sex sodomy laws were later overturned in Puerto Rico in 2005, Missouri in 2006 and Montana, Virginia and the US Armed Forces in 2013. And in 2003 the US supreme court ruled against a same-sex sodomy law in Texas, ruling that private sexual conduct is a protected liberty right. Illinois was the first state to repeal the law in 1962 after adopting the Model Penal Code, a code that removed consensual sodomy as a crime but made soliciting for gay sex illegal.īut it took until 2002 for 36 states to repeal their sodomy laws – or have the state courts overturn them. Sodomy was illegal in every state in North America up until 1962. In Virginia in 1779, Thomas Jefferson even wrote a law punishing gay men for sodomy with castration – but luckily that clause was rejected. Michigan carried a maximum 15 year penalty. The harshest penalty for sodomy was Idaho state where being found guilty carried a life sentence. Sodomy laws in the United States were broad enough not just to target gay men – but even applied to the sexual acts between married couples in the bedroom.
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