What does antisodomy mean?
Antisodomy refers to opposition to sodomy, and in practice the word is encountered almost exclusively in discussions of law and public policy, most commonly in the phrase 'antisodomy laws'. Such statutes historically criminalized acts deemed unnatural under religiously influenced codes of morality, and they were overwhelmingly enforced against gay men. The term therefore functions less as a description of a personal attitude than as a label for institutionalized prohibition: courts, legislatures, historians, and human-rights advocates use it when cataloguing which jurisdictions enacted, upheld, or repealed these measures. Its register is formal and specialized; it belongs to legal scholarship, constitutional history, and civil-rights reporting rather than casual conversation, where the underlying issues are usually discussed through terms like anti-gay legislation or LGBTQ rights. Etymologically it combines the prefix 'anti-' ('against') with 'sodomy', itself drawn from the biblical city of Sodom. Understanding the word illuminates how legal language encoded moral disapproval — and how its gradual disappearance from statute books has become a marker of social change.
nounOpposition to, or prohibition of, sodomy; the term most often appears in reference to laws, policies, or movements that criminalize or condemn homosexual acts.
- Opposition to sodomy as embodied in legal prohibitions or policies criminalizing it.
"The Supreme Court's 2003 decision struck down the antisodomy laws still enforced in several states."
"Human rights groups campaigned for decades to overturn the colony's antisodomy statutes."
"The historian traced how antisodomy legislation shaped queer communities across two centuries."
As an abstract mass-like term, 'antisodomy' is rarely pluralized directly; plurality is typically expressed through phrases such as 'antisodomy laws' or 'antisodomy statutes'.
"Many former colonies retained their inherited antisodomy statutes well into the twenty-first century."
The word 'antisodomy' rarely names an attitude directly — it almost always shows up attached to 'laws', a reminder of how long such statutes survived in the English-speaking world.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of antisodomy
The word is a modern formation combining the Greek-derived prefix 'anti-' ('against') with 'sodomy', a term that entered English in the medieval period via Latin 'sodomia'. That Latin word ultimately traces to the biblical city of Sodom, whose destruction in the Book of Genesis was traditionally linked in Christian interpretation to sexual transgression. As 'sodomy' became embedded in legal and ecclesiastical vocabulary, later formations like 'antisodomy' arose to denote opposition to it, particularly in the context of statutory prohibitions.
How antisodomy is actually used
A specialized term found mainly in legal, historical, and human-rights writing rather than everyday speech. Because 'sodomy' carries strong moral and religious connotations, 'antisodomy' inherits a charged register and is best reserved for contexts where precise legal or historical language is appropriate.