Sodomy (), also called buggery in British English, principally refers to either anal sex (but occasionally also oral sex) between people, or any sexual activity between a human and another animal (bestiality). It may also mean any non-procreative sexual activity (including manual sex). Originally the term sodomy, which is derived from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Book of Genesis, was commonly restricted to homosexual anal sex. Sodomy laws in many countries criminalized the behavior. In the Western world, many of these laws have been overturned or are routinely not enforced. (Or ) A person who practices sodomy is sometimes referred to as a sodomite, a pejorative term.
Terminology The term is derived from the Ecclesiastical Latin , "sin of Sodom", which in turn comes from the Ancient Greek word (Sódoma). Genesis (chapters 18–20) tells how God destroyed the sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Two angels sent to the cities are invited by Lot to take refuge with his family for the night. The men of Sodom surround Lot's house and demand that he bring out the strangers so that they may "know" them (a euphemism for sexual intercourse). Lot protests that the messengers are his guests and offers the Sodomites his virgin daughters instead, but then they threaten to "do worse" with Lot than they would with his guests. Then the angels strike the Sodomites blind, "so that they wearied themselves to find the door". (Genesis 19:4–11, KJV)
In modern English In current usage the term is particularly used in law. Laws prohibiting sodomy were seen frequently in past Jewish, Christian, and Islamic civilizations, but the term has little modern usage outside Africa, Asia, and the United States.
These laws in the United States have been challenged and have sometimes been found unconstitutional or been replaced with different legislation.
The word sod, a noun or verb (to "sod off") used as an insult, is derived from sodomite. It is a general-purpose insult term for anyone the speaker dislikes without specific reference to their sexual behaviour. Sod is used as slang in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth and is considered mildly offensive. (The word 'sod' also has a meaning of "(clump of) earth" with an unrelated etymology, in which sense it is rare but not offensive.)
Cognates in other languages Many cognates in other languages, such as French (verb ), Spanish (verb ), and Portuguese (verb ), are used exclusively for penetrative anal sex, at least since the early 19th century. In those languages, the term is also often current vernacular (not just legal, unlike in other cultures) and a formal way of referring to any practice of anal penetration; the word sex is commonly associated with consent and pleasure with regard to all involved parties and often avoids directly mentioning two common aspects of social taboo – human sexuality and the anus – without a shunning or archaic connotation to its use.
In modern German the word has no connotation of anal or oral sex and specifically refers to bestiality.See Paragraph 175 StGB, version of June 28, 1935. The same goes for the Polish . The Norwegian word carries both senses. In Danish, is rendered as "unnatural carnal knowledge with someone of the same sex or (now) with animals".
In Arabic and Persian, the word for sodomy, (Arabic pronunciation: ; Persian pronunciation ), is derived from the same source as in Western culture, with much the same connotations as English (referring to most sexual acts prohibited by the Qur'an). Its direct reference is to Lot (لوط Lūṭ in Arabic) and a more literal interpretation of the word is "the practice of Lot", but more accurately it means "the practice of Lot's people" (the Sodomites) rather than Lot himself.
Religious and legal interpretation While religion and the law have had a fundamental role in the historical definition and punishment of sodomy, sodomitical texts present considerable opportunities for ambiguity and interpretation. Sodomy is both a real occurrence and an imagined category. In the course of the eighteenth century, what is identifiable as sodomy often becomes identified with effeminacy, for example, or in opposition to a discourse of manliness.
In this regard Ian McCormick has argued that
an adequate and imaginative reading involves a series of intertextual interventions in which histories become stories, fabrications and reconstructions in lively debate with, and around, 'dominant' heterosexualities ... Deconstructing what we think we see may well involve reconstructing ourselves in surprising and unanticipated ways.
Buggery The modern English word "bugger" is derived from the French term , that evolved from the Latin Bulgarus or "Bulgarian". The word was used to describe members of the Bogomils, a heretical sect originating in 10th century Bulgaria, as well as the related French Albigenses.
The first use of the word "buggery" appears in Middle English in 1330 where it is associated with "abominable heresy", though the sexual sense of "bugger" is not recorded until 1555. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology quotes a similar form: "bowgard" (and "bouguer"), but claims that the Bulgarians were heretics "as belonging to the Greek Church, sp. Albigensian". Webster's Third New International Dictionary gives the only meaning of the word "bugger" as a sodomite "from the adherence of the Bulgarians to the Eastern Church considered heretical".
Bugger is still commonly used in modern British English as an exclamation, while "buggery" is synonymous with the act of sodomy.
History
Hebrew Bible
In the Hebrew Bible, Sodom was a city destroyed by God because of the evil of its inhabitants. No specific sin is given as the reason for God's great wrath. The story of Sodom's destructionand of Abraham's failed attempt to intercede with God and prevent that destructionappears in Genesis 18–19. The connection between Sodom and homosexuality is derived from the described attempt by a mob of the city's people to rape Lot's male guests. Some suggest the sinfulness for which Sodom was destroyed might have consisted mainly in the violation of obligations of hospitality, which were important for the original writers of the Biblical account.Boswell, pp. 92–98 In Judges 19–21, there is an account, similar in many ways, where Gibeah, a city of the Benjamin tribe, is destroyed by the other tribes of Israel in revenge for a mob of its inhabitants raping and killing 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 by the prophets of the Hebrew Bible are adultery and lying ().
In Ezekiel 16, a long comparison is made between Sodom and the kingdom of Judah: "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." (v. 47, NASB) "Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me." (vss. 49–50, NASB) (The Hebrew for the word "thus" is the conjunction "ו" which is usually translated "and", therefore KJV, NIV, and CEV omit the word entirely.)
There is no explicit mention of any sexual sin in Ezekiel's summation and "abomination" is used to describe many sins.
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.
The Book of Wisdom, which is included in the Biblical canon by Orthodox and Catholic Christians, makes reference to the story of Sodom, further emphasizing that their sin had been failing to practice hospitality:
Philo The Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, Philo (20 BCE – 50 CE), described the inhabitants of Sodom in an extra-biblical account:
New Testament The New Testament, like the Old Testament, references Sodom as a place where God's anger against sin was displayed, but the Epistle of Jude provides a certain class of sin as causative of its destruction, the meaning of which is disputed.
The Greek word in the New Testament from which the phrase is translated "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 such as the NIV render it as "sexual immorality".
The Greek words for "strange flesh" are heteros, which almost 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.
In the Christian expansion of the prophets, they further linked Sodom to the sins of impenitence (), careless living (), fornication ( KJV), and an overall "filthy" lifestyle (), which word (aselgeiais) elsewhere is rendered in the KJV as lasciviousness (; ; ; ; ) or wantonness (; ).
Epistle 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.
One theory is that it is just a reference to the "strange flesh" of the intended rape victims, who were angels, not men.Boswell, p. 97 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,Albert Barnes' Notes on the BibleVincent's Word Studies "out of the order of nature".Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary on the Old and New Testaments "Strange" is understood to mean "outside the moral law",Word pictures in the New Testament, Archibald Thomas Robertson (; ) while it is doubted that either Lot or the men of Sodom understood that the strangers were angels at the time.Gill, Gn. 19
Josephus