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Sodomy (//) is generally anal or oral sex between people or sexual activity between a person and a non-human animal (bestiality), but may also include any non-procreative sexual activity.[1][2][3] Originally the term sodomy, which is derived from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in chapters 18 and 19 of the Book of Genesis in the Bible,[4] was commonly restricted to anal sex.[5][6]Sodomy laws in many countries criminalized not only these behaviors, but other disfavored sexual activities as well.[6][7] In the Western world, however, many of these laws have been overturned or are not routinely enforced.

The term, from the Ecclesiastical Latin: peccatum Sodomiticum or "sin of Sodom", is derived from the Greek word Sdoma.[8]Genesis (chapters 18-20) tells how God wished to destroy the sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Two angels (literally "messengers") 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 the messengers out so that they may "know" them. 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 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, Islamic countries, and the United States.[9] In the various criminal codes of the U.S., the term sodomy has generally been replaced by the term deviant sexual intercourse, which is described as any form of penetrative intercourse or cunnilingus between unmarried persons.[10] These laws have been challenged and have sometimes been found unconstitutional or been replaced with different legislation.[11] Elsewhere, the legal use of the term sodomy is restricted to rape cases where anal penetration has taken place.[12]

Many cognates in other languages, such as French sodomie (verb sodomiser), Spanish sodoma (verb sodomizar), and Portuguese sodomia (verb sodomizar), are used exclusively for penetrative anal sex, at least since the early nineteenth 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 Sodomie 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 sodomia. The Norwegian word sodomi carries both senses.

In Arabic and Persian, the word for sodomy, (Arabic pronunciation: liw; Persian pronunciation lavt), 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 ( L 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.

The word sod, a noun or verb (to "sod off") used as an insult, is derived from sodomite.[13][14] 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 Commonwealth and is mildly offensive.

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 becomes 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."[15]

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 the Sodom's destruction and of Abraham's failed attempt to intercede with God and prevent that destruction appears in Genesis 18-19.

The connection between Sodom and homosexuality is derived from the depicted attempt of a mob of city people to rape Lot's male guests. Some suggest the sinfulness of that, for the original writers of the Biblical account, might have consisted mainly in the violation of the obligations of hospitality.[16] This view does not take into account that, before the "guests" arrived in the city Genesis 18:17 and any "hospitality" could have been rendered, its destruction was already planned. (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.)

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Sodomy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia