As already noted, sodomy laws vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Georgia’s sodomy law, Official Code of Georgia 16-6-2, criminalizes
that is, oral or anal sex, whether heterosexual or homosexual, and applying to lesbians as well as gay men.
Other sodomy laws are more vague as to what exactly is prohibited. For example, Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (10 U.S.C. 925) prohibits
(Georgia law separately criminalizes bestiality or sex with an animal). The State of Idaho criminalizes
with no further definition in the statute (Idaho Code 18-6605). Laws such as the UCMJ or the Idaho statute have generally been held to apply to homosexual or heterosexual oral or anal sex (or to sex acts with a non-human animal if the statute includes that as well). A minority of states with anti-sodomy laws specify only homosexual acts, for example, Texas Penal Code 21.06 (“Homosexual Conduct”) prohibits
(where “deviate sexual intercourse” is defined as “any contact between any part of the genitals of one person and the mouth or anus of another person; or, the penetration of the genitals or the anus of another person with an object”)
Prosecutions of either gays or straights are rare, but occasionally still happen. The Georgia sodomy law (and other sodomy laws in the United States) was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bowers v. Hardwick, which involved two gay men having oral sex. The Georgia law against sodomy (as regards to private, non-commercial, consensual acts between adults) was later struck down by the Georgia Supreme Court in Powell v. State, which involved a man having consensual oral sex with his 17-year-old niece. I don’t think there is any great enthusiasm for prosecuting people for consensual sodomy, whether gay or straight–note that the facts of Georgia’s Powell case, a man and his 17-year-old niece, are fairly “icky”, and don’t necessarily mean Georgia prosecutors were hellbent on stamping out oral sex. (Note: The portion of Georgia’s sodomy law prohibiting “aggravated sodomy”–“sodomy with force and against the will of the other person or when he or she commits sodomy with a person who is less than ten years of age”–is still a major and enforceable crime in Georgia; one of seven serious violent crimes for which a second conviction merits an automatic life sentence.) The existence of sodomy laws does often have political consequence for gays and lesbians, as an argument against gay rights laws on the grounds that anti-discrimination laws which protect homosexuals are tantamount to anti-discrimination protection for criminal behavior. (Of course, advocates of anti-discrimination laws protecting homosexuals argue that sodomy laws are unconstitutional or inherently wrong, and sodomy laws in the U.S. have been dwindling from repeal by state legislatures and overturn by state courts.) For example, in the Robin Shahar case in Georgia, the state’s sodomy law was used as justification for firing a lesbian lawyer from the state attorney general’s office.
