SODOMY

In criminal law. The crime of unnatural sexual connection; so named from its prevalence in Sodom. See Genesis, xix. This term is often defined in statutes and judicial decisions as meaning “the crime against nature,” the “crimen innominatum” or as carnal copulation, against the order of nature, by man with man, or, in the same unnatural manner, with woman or with a beast. But, strictly speaking, it should be used only as equivalent to “pederasty,” that is, the sexual act as performed by a man upon the person of another man or a boy by penetration of the anus. See Ausman v. Veal, 10 Ind. 355, 71 Am. Dec. 331. The term might also, without any great violence to its original meaning, be so extended as to cover the same act when performed in the same manner by a man upon the person of a woman. Another possible method of unilateral sexual connection, by penetration of the mouth (penem in orem alii immittere, vel p enem alii in orem recipere) is not properly called “sodomy,” but “fellation.” That this does not constitute sodomy within the meaning of a statute is held in Harvey v. State. On the other hand bestiality is the carnal copulation of a human being with a brute, or animal of the sub-human orders, of the opposite sex. It is not identical with sodomy, nor is it a form of sodomy, though the two terms are often confused in legal writings and sometimes in statutes. See Ausman v. Veal, 10 Ind. 355, 71 Am. Dec 331. Buggery is a term rarely used In statutes, but apparently including both sodomy On the widest sense) and bestiality as above defined.