Box Turtle Bulletin

Today In History, 1647: Rhode Island Colony Enacts Anti-Sodomy Law

Roger Williams established Providence Plantation (“Plantation” was a synonym for a settlement or colony) in 1636 as a refuge for religious freedom and on the principle of majority rule among the heads of households for “civil things.” He had established his colony after Massachusetts banished him for spreading “diverse, new, and dangerous position.” Those positions included theological and legal disputes with the leaders of Massachusetts colony, and since Massachusetts laws were based on Puritan theology, Williams was found guilty of sedition and heresy simultaneously. His Providence Plantation would be far different, becoming the first outpost to uphold the diverse, new, and dangerous position of the separation of church and state.

The following year, Massachusetts banished the followers of Anne Hutchinson, who preached the doctrine of Antinomianism, which held that if salvation came through faith and divine grace alone, then the strict imposition of a moral law by political authorities was an unbiblical reliance on good works over faith. Hutchinson’s followers settled in present-day Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Other settlements soon followed.

In 1647, representatives from Providence, Portsmouth, Newport and Warwick came together in Portsmouth to establish a government for the Rhode Island Colony, and to draw up a body of laws which would become one of the earliest governmental codes enacted by colonists in the New World. With Rhode Island being a refuge for those “distressed of conscience,” Rhode Island’s new code was modeled more on the statutes of England rather than on Biblical texts as in Massachusetts. But that didn’t mean it was devoid of Biblical citations — Rhode Island Colony may have prized religious freedom, but there was still an assumption that Biblical principles were important in public life. And so Rhode Island Colony’s law addressing sodomy cited, in addition to English law, Paul’s letter to the Romans as part of its justification. That section read:

Touching Whoremongers. First of sodomy, which is forbidden by this present Assembly throughout the whole colony, and by sundry statutes of England 25 Hen. 8, 6: 5 Eliz 17. It is a vile affection, whereby men given up thereto leave the natural use of women and burn in their lusts toward another, and so men with men work that which is unseemly, as that Doctor of the Gentiles [St. Paul] in his letter to the Romans once spake, i. 27. The penalty concluded by that state under whose authority we are is felony of death without remedy. See 5 Eliz 17.(2)

The citations of 25 Henry 8, 6 and 5 Elizabeth 17 refer to, respectively, the 1533 buggery statute enacted under King Henry VIII, and its 1563 reenactment under Queen Elizabeth I. The reference to Paul’s letter to the Romans was unusual. Legislation at that time would have much more typically referenced Leviticus 20:13. But remember, Rhode Island Colony was settled by colonists who rejected salvation by works of the law, and there’s nothing more workier-of-the-law than Leviticus. Hence, the New Testament citation rather than the Old.

By imposing the death penalty for men who “work that which is unseemly” with other men, sodomy joined treason, murder, manslaughter, witchcraft, robbery, arson, and rape as crimes meriting the death penalty. There were no recorded persecutions under this law or any subsequent laws which included the death penalty, although that may be due to a lack of rigorous record keeping rather than a lack of prosecutions. The ultimate penalty was eliminated in 1844 and replaced with one to twelve years’ imprisonment. The minimum penalty was raised to seven years in 1872, and the maximum was raised to twenty years in 1881. The Rhode Island legislature didn’t get around to decriminalizing consensual sex between same-sex couples until 1998.