Crimes Against Nature

Department of Theatre & Drama: Season 1999-2000
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Suddenly Last Summer

Crimes Against Nature
Extracts from 1951 state laws that define “sodomy, crime against nature, or buggery”

LOUISIANA 740-89 Crime against nature. Crime against nature is the unnatural carnal copulation by a human being with another of the same or opposite sex or with an animal. Emission is not necessary, and when committed by a human being with another, the use of the genital organ of one of the offenders of whatever sex is sufficient to constitute the crime. Whoever commits the crime against nature shall be fined not more than two thousand dollars, or imprisoned, with or without hard labor, for not more than five years, or both.
INDIANA 10-4221. Sodomy. Whoever commits the abominable and detestable crime against nature with mankind or beast; or whoever entices, allures, instigates or aids any person under the age of twenty-one (21) years to commit masturbation or self-pollution shall be deemed guilty of sodomy, and, on conviction shall be fined not less than one hundred dollars ($100) nor more than one thousand dollars ($1,000), to which may be added imprisonment in the state prison not less than two (2) years nor more than fourteen (14) years.
CONNECTICUT 8554 Bestiality and sodomy. Any person who shall have carnal copulation with any beast, or who shall have carnal knowledge of any man, against the order of nature, unless forced or under fifteen years of age, shall be imprisoned in the State Prison not more than thirty years.
GEORGIA 26-5901. Sodomy defined. Sodomy is the carnal knowledge and connection against the order of nature, by man with man, or in the same unnatural manner with woman. …
26-5902. Punishment of sodomy. The punishment of sodomy shall be imprisonment at labor in the penitentiary for and during the natural life of the person convicted.
—Cory, Donald Webster. The Homosexual in America.
New York: Greenberg, 1951.