Sodomy law: Connecticut, December 1, 1642
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The General Court of Connecticut adopted a list of twelve capital crimes, all but the rape law based on the Massachusetts Bay Colony's Liberties of 1641.[1] The capital crimes in Connecticut were:
- (1) idolatry
- (2) witchcraft,
- (3) blasphemy
- (4) murder with malice aforethought
- (5) murder through poisoning
- (6) bestiality
- (7) sodomy. Here referred to only as "man lying with man,"
- (8) adultery
- (9) rape
- (10) kidnapping
- (11) perjury with intent to cause a man to lose his life
- (12) treason
This law was readopted in a codification of 1650, May.
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References
- ↑ Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac (NY: Harper & Row, 1983), p 85, citing J. Hammond Trumbull, ed., The Public Records of the Colony Of Connecticut (Hartford: Lockwood and Brainard, 1850), vol. I, pp. 77-78; Mary Jeanne Anderson Jones, Congregational Commonwealth: Connecticut 1636-62 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1968), pp. 101-102.
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