What do you think distingushes that from “sodomy?” Sodomy laws often define “sodomy” as any kind of sex other than vaginal intercourse.
That seems to be the wrong way round. Sodomy, as a term, can mean a huge range things including oral sex, but buggery has to include an arse or an animal.
From a Wikiarticle, but it’s the original cite, not their possibly inaccurate paraphrasing, so I’d say it’s reliable:
And it’s no longer a crime at all, in England and Wales, where this crime took place. I’m surprised to hear that someone can be charged with a crime that no longer exists because it did exist when the crime took place, but it does at least explain why both articles mention buggery.
My safe search must be really effective at the moment - even ‘buggery act uk’ isn’t showing anything disturbing. 
Take it up with Merriam-Webster and Princeton.
They apparently have it wrong and their mistake, according to you, presentation causes far more harm than I do here.
I noted that I did proper lookup and took my info from what I consider reliable sources.
If those sources were in error I am sorry.
I think it is time you provided some cites.
I looked it up in the Oxford Dictionary. Perhaps the final word in English word definitions.
I’ve now given THREE dictionary definitions. ALL of which say buggery = sodomy.
Seriously, time for you to stop busting my chops on this one.
Dictionary definitions aren’t reliable for the legal meaning of a term. Buggery and sodomy don’t mean exactly the same thing, not in Welsh law, but that’s because buggery is more narrowly defined than sodomy, not the other way round.
Gotcha.
Ignorance fought. (thanks)
The unsafe image search is surprisingly tame too. Well, apart from that guy shagging a goat.
Looked it up and Wiki had this to say (bolding mine):
So, under law in Wales:
Buggery = Sodomy
Buggery = Bestiality
Thus saying buggery = sodomy is correct. If you have anal sex with someone you are guilty of buggery under that law. You do not need to both have sex with an animal and have anal sex with a human for buggery to apply.
I submit I was correct in my first post although it is worth noting that buggery included bestiality as well.
Like I said it means it took place before the Sexual Offences Act 2003 was enacted and the offence of buggery was replaced by other offences.
Historic sexual abuse cases are quite common (because it’s the kind of crime that avoid detection for a long time, but serious enough that even if the offences are many years old it’s still in the public interest to prosecute), someone being charged with buggery in England and Wales isn’t actually rare enough to be remarkable. You could probably expect a medium-sized Crown Court centre to deal with several cases involving buggery charges in a year.
No. Sodomy can mean all sorts of different sex, including oral sex, mutual masturbation, bestiality, whatever. Buggery only means anal sex or bestiality. That’s exactly what it says in the Wiki article we’ve both quoted from. You’re misunderstanding what ‘sodomy’ means.
I never said that you need to both have sex with an animal and have anal sex with a human for buggery to apply. I said anal or animal.
What surprised me is not someone being tried for sexual abuse that happened a long time ago, but someone being tried for a crime that no longer exists. I guess it does make sense, though; you can’t try someone retrospectively for an act that only became criminal after they did it, so he couldn’t be charged with the new offences; not charging him with the old crime would mean that he basically could get away with it. So I’ve learnt something new today, which is always nice. 
This is a remarkably pun-free thread considering it’s about the Welsh and buggery. Not a mention of sheep anywhere! How restrained we all are.
That’s it in a nutshell.
Another example would be that when cannabis was reclassified a couple of years ago for a short while afterwards there were still people being arrested, tried and sentenced for it under the old classicifcation because their offence took place before the reclassification. Of course though historic drug cases are beyond rare, nearly all historic cases are sexual abuse cases.
A potential difficulty for a case where new legislation supercedes old legislation is when the exact date of the offence is unknown or it took place over a period of time such that it falls under both legislation (IIRC the correct procedure is to charge someone under the old offence, but IANAL).
Where are we getting these definitions from?
Are we speaking the same language?
Oxford defines sodomy as anal or oral copulation. That’s it. (cite)
If the legal term of sodomy is different fine but then I have to wonder why the hell the legal profession can’t use words that exist to define an act and must co-opt other words.
For the majority who are not lawyers:
Sodomy = Anal sex
Sodomy = Oral sex
Buggery = Anal sex
Buggery = Bestiality
I see one thing in common there.
Yes, the legal definition is different, varying in different places, (A cite from the US because there isn’t one for the UK), but that really wide meaning isn’t confined to legal texts - in older works of fiction, sodomy / a sodomite is often not referring to anything arse-related at all.
And the Oxford English Dictionary actually says only that sodomy is anal sex, not oral. That’s the way it’s used in everyday life, certainly, but we’ve been talking about legal definitions here, not everyday. The only dictionary definition that would count would be one from a British legal dictionary.
I don’t really understand why you’re saying that sodomy and bestiality are the same even though your list with the equals signs shows that they’re not the same. 
Whack-a-Mole, I believe that you’re abusing the equals sign. If a word A is defined as meaning ‘B or C’, then that does not mean you can represent it as:
A = B
A = C
Particularly because this would lead to the conclusion that B and C are equal to each other, in which case there would be no reason to put them as alternatives in the definition.
If you want to try using mathematical symbols, then the closest would be ‘A = (B union C)’, using the set logic union operator. That, or start drawing Venn diagrams. 
I get what you are both saying. I really do.
However, I was called out for saying “Buggery = Sodomy” and the responses since are pedantic in the extreme. We have the common English definition of the word, the legal definition and the logic treatment of the word.
Here is my thinking:
In English the definition of “buggery” is that is “sodomy”. I have produced three cites for that already.
In legal terms “buggery” equals bestiality or sodomy (at least in olden times). If you are in court (in olden times) for buggery because you boned Roger then you are guilty. The law did not require that you not only boned Roger but ALSO boned your sheep.
Buggery in the law equals anal sex. It also equals bestiality.
I was not wrong when I said buggery = sodoomy. By law and common definition it does. That it also can include bestiality or that sodomy can include oral sex does not make that wrong. If you are standing trial for buggery because you boned Roger the court is saying buggery = sodomy = anal sex. It does not matter if you gave Roger a BJ or if you also got too friendly with your sheep. Those would be separate charges.
So, common language and law would have my original statement stand. That the word also means other things does not make the original statement wrong.
As to the logic treatment of it apparently the common language and law don’t care even though it makes sense.
Quoth chromaticity:
But the hedgehog cannot be buggered at all.
There was however the case of the man accused of buffing a bottlenose.
But it’s not pedantry. If someone was convicted of sodomy in Seattle and someone else was convicted of buggery in Birmingham you need more information before you can be sure that their actual actions were very similar at all.
A man being convicted of consensual sex with a man is rather different to him being convicted of oral sex with a woman or any sort of sex with an animal. A woman convicted of sodomy, in most states of the US, would have been guilty of oral sex with a man, but a woman convicted of bugger here would have been guilty of bestiality, because the definitions are different when it comes to crimes women can be convicted of.
BTW:
Once again, I never said it did. I said anal OR animal, not AND.
But actually no, if Roger in Penarthen in 1900 boned Daffyd the shepherd and also Dolly the sheep, then they would both be covered by the charge of buggery.
Section 12 of the Sexual Offenses Act 1956 deals with buggery. It was to have been repealed by an item in one of the schedules to the Sexual Offenses Act 2003, but I am unsure if the relevant provision was ever brought into force, many of SOA 2003 provisions have not.
A Westlaw search was unhelpful but the UK legislation website seems to think the law is still inforce
The CPS website still has guidelines on chargingfor buggery by the way.