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Homosexuals And The Death Penalty In Colonial America, Louis Crompton

Department of English: Faculty Publications

This article traces the legislative history of statutes prescribing the death penalty for sodomy in 17th-century New England and in the other American colonies. New England and some middle colonies broke with English legal tradition by adopting explicitly biblical language. After the Revolution, Pennsylvania took the lead, in 1786, in dropping the death penalty.

As the nation prepares to celebrate the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence, the question of the status of the homosexual in pre-Revolutionary America comes to mind. The Body of Liberties approved by the Colony of Massachusetts Bay in 1641 welcomed refugees seeking to escape "the …