Sodomy law: New Hampshire, March 16, 1680
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On March 16, 1680, legislators of New Hampshire passed the colony's first capital laws, copied almost word for word from the Plymouth laws of 1671:
If any man lie with mankind as he lies with a woman; both of them have committed abomination; They both shall surely be put to death: unless one party were forced, or were under fourteen years of age. And all other Sodomitical filthiness shall be severely punished according to the nature of it.[1]
This law was next revised in 1718.
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References
- ↑ Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (NY: Harper & Row, 1983), p. 118-119 citing Albert Stillman Batcheller, ed., Laws of New Hampshire, Including Public and PrivateActsand Resolves and the Royal Commissions and Instructions, with Historical and Descriptive Notes . . . (Manchester, N.H.: John B. Clarke, 1904), vol. 1, pp. 11-13.
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