In that year, the Model Penal Code (MPC) - developed by the American Law Institute to promote uniformity among the states as they modernized their statutes - struck a compromise that removed consensual sodomy from its criminal code while making it a crime to solicit for sodomy. Prior to 1962, sodomy was a felony in every state, punished by a lengthy term of imprisonment and/or hard labor. It was rejected by the Virginia legislature. In 1779, Thomas Jefferson tried to reduce the maximum punishment to castration. There were gay men on General Washington's staff and among the leaders of the new republic, even though in Virginia there was a maximum penalty of death for sodomy. The reason he argues is that male-male eroticism did not threaten the social structure or challenge the gendered division of labor or the patriarchal ownership of wealth. TexasĬolin Talley argues that the sodomy statutes in colonial America in the 17th century were largely unenforced. 3 State and territorial laws prior to Lawrence v.
