Current Version
| Region | United States |
| Issue | Serving openly in military |
| Status | Varies by Region |
| Start Date | Apr 2, 1513 |
| End Date | Sep 4, 1886 |
| Description | From April 2, 1513, when Spain first named and claimed La Florida, until September 4, 1886, the history of homosexuality in the militaries of lands that are now the United States was mostly a history of punishment for same-sex acts rather than regulation of “homosexuality” as a modern identity. In the Spanish sphere, the legal background of empire in the Americas included the Siete Partidas tradition, under which sodomy was treated as a grave offense, so the Spanish military world in Florida and elsewhere in Spanish North America operated within a legal order that criminalized such conduct. In the French sphere, sodomy was likewise criminal under the ancien-régime monarchy, and scholarship on New France shows that this was not just theoretical: in 1648 a French military drummer in the colony was convicted in a sodomy case. In the Dutch colony of New Netherland, metropolitan Dutch law punished sodomy severely, and after the English conquest the Duke of York’s Laws of March 1, 1665 imposed the English-style death penalty for sodomy in the conquered colony. In the English and then British colonies more broadly, anti-sodomy law was entrenched early; Virginia had such a law by May 24, 1610, and the wider British imperial military culture treated buggery as a capital or infamous offense. New Sweden fit the same broader punitive pattern, because Sweden’s 1608 secular law criminalized sodomy, even if a colony-specific military rule is not clearly preserved in the same way. After independence, the United States left a clearer military paper trail. The first clearly documented U.S. military case is Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin, court-martialed in the Continental Army on March 10, 1778 for “attempting to commit sodomy” and then expelled under George Washington’s authority. By 1805, historians have identified the earliest recorded U.S. Navy sodomy accusation aboard USS Constitution, a case that also touched the early Marine Corps. In lands that later passed through Mexico, the legal picture eventually diverged somewhat from the older Spanish pattern: scholarship on Mexico’s first national penal code says the 1871 code, effective 1872, did not expressly criminalize consensual same-sex acts, though that did not amount to a modern military “open service” regime. The Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, though not part of the continental United States and not annexed until later, belongs on the punitive side: its Penal Code of June 21, 1850 criminalized sodomy. Russia is mostly outside “USA proper” because its North American empire centered on Alaska, but Russian law also criminalized sodomy before the United States acquired Alaska in 1867. Canada, strictly speaking, did not colonize the continental United States as Canada; for the future U.S., the relevant earlier colonial powers were chiefly France and Britain, whose military and civil legal traditions already punished same-sex acts. By the time Chiricahua Apache military independence ended at Skeleton Canyon on Sept |
| Sources | Spain / Spanish Florida https://dos.fl.gov/florida-facts/florida-history/a-brief-history/european-exploration-and-colonization/ https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2014/04/introduction-to-roman-law-global-legal-collection-highlights/ France / French legal background https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-1969-amendment-and-the-de-criminalization-of-homosexuality https://www.humandignitytrust.org/lgbt-the-law/a-history-of-criminalisation/ Hawaiʻi / Kingdom of Hawaiʻi https://www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/sensibilities/hawaii.htm Mexico https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/2/2/51 United States / Continental Army / early U.S. military https://archivesfoundation.org/documents/court-martial-record-of-lieutenant-frederick-gotthold-enslin-march-10-1778/ https://artsandculture.google.com/story/amending-america-lgbtq-human-and-civil-rights-u-s-national-archives/sgUBMUy1AlfjIw?hl=en British / Colonial Virginia https://www.outhistory.org/exhibits/show/the-age-of-sodomitical-sin/1610s/sodomy-law-virginia-may-24-161 https://cdnsm5-ss1.sharpschool.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server_10640642/File/bugge/Chapter%203/The%20Laws%20of%20Virginia%201610-1611.pdf Dutch / English conquest / Duke of York’s Laws https://history.nycourts.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Publications_Dukes-Transcript-compressed.pdf https://www.outhistory.org/exhibits/show/the-age-of-sodomitical-sin/1660s/sodomy-law-the-duke-of-yorks-l Sweden https://rikosjarakkaus.poliisimuseo.fi/en/kriminalisoinnin-juuret/ Russia https://www.refworld.org/en/download/118860 Chiricahua Apache / 1886 endpoint https://www.nps.gov/chir/learn/historyculture/post-apache-wars.htm |
Revision History (1)
| Original entry | |
|---|---|
| Status | Varies by Region |
| Start Date | Apr 2, 1513 |
| End Date | Sep 4, 1886 |
| Description | From April 2, 1513, when Spain first named and claimed La Florida, until September 4, 1886, the history of homosexuality in the militaries of lands that are now the United States was mostly a history of punishment for same-sex acts rather than regulation of “homosexuality” as a modern identity. In the Spanish sphere, the legal background of empire in the Americas included the Siete Partidas tradition, under which sodomy was treated as a grave offense, so the Spanish military world in Florida and elsewhere in Spanish North America operated within a legal order that criminalized such conduct. In the French sphere, sodomy was likewise criminal under the ancien-régime monarchy, and scholarship on New France shows that this was not just theoretical: in 1648 a French military drummer in the colony was convicted in a sodomy case. In the Dutch colony of New Netherland, metropolitan Dutch law punished sodomy severely, and after the English conquest the Duke of York’s Laws of March 1, 1665 imposed the English-style death penalty for sodomy in the conquered colony. In the English and then British colonies more broadly, anti-sodomy law was entrenched early; Virginia had such a law by May 24, 1610, and the wider British imperial military culture treated buggery as a capital or infamous offense. New Sweden fit the same broader punitive pattern, because Sweden’s 1608 secular law criminalized sodomy, even if a colony-specific military rule is not clearly preserved in the same way. After independence, the United States left a clearer military paper trail. The first clearly documented U.S. military case is Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin, court-martialed in the Continental Army on March 10, 1778 for “attempting to commit sodomy” and then expelled under George Washington’s authority. By 1805, historians have identified the earliest recorded U.S. Navy sodomy accusation aboard USS Constitution, a case that also touched the early Marine Corps. In lands that later passed through Mexico, the legal picture eventually diverged somewhat from the older Spanish pattern: scholarship on Mexico’s first national penal code says the 1871 code, effective 1872, did not expressly criminalize consensual same-sex acts, though that did not amount to a modern military “open service” regime. The Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, though not part of the continental United States and not annexed until later, belongs on the punitive side: its Penal Code of June 21, 1850 criminalized sodomy. Russia is mostly outside “USA proper” because its North American empire centered on Alaska, but Russian law also criminalized sodomy before the United States acquired Alaska in 1867. Canada, strictly speaking, did not colonize the continental United States as Canada; for the future U.S., the relevant earlier colonial powers were chiefly France and Britain, whose military and civil legal traditions already punished same-sex acts. By the time Chiricahua Apache military independence ended at Skeleton Canyon on Sept |
| Sources | Spain / Spanish Florida https://dos.fl.gov/florida-facts/florida-history/a-brief-history/european-exploration-and-colonization/ https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2014/04/introduction-to-roman-law-global-legal-collection-highlights/ France / French legal background https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-1969-amendment-and-the-de-criminalization-of-homosexuality https://www.humandignitytrust.org/lgbt-the-law/a-history-of-criminalisation/ Hawaiʻi / Kingdom of Hawaiʻi https://www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/sensibilities/hawaii.htm Mexico https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/2/2/51 United States / Continental Army / early U.S. military https://archivesfoundation.org/documents/court-martial-record-of-lieutenant-frederick-gotthold-enslin-march-10-1778/ https://artsandculture.google.com/story/amending-america-lgbtq-human-and-civil-rights-u-s-national-archives/sgUBMUy1AlfjIw?hl=en British / Colonial Virginia https://www.outhistory.org/exhibits/show/the-age-of-sodomitical-sin/1610s/sodomy-law-virginia-may-24-161 https://cdnsm5-ss1.sharpschool.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server_10640642/File/bugge/Chapter%203/The%20Laws%20of%20Virginia%201610-1611.pdf Dutch / English conquest / Duke of York’s Laws https://history.nycourts.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Publications_Dukes-Transcript-compressed.pdf https://www.outhistory.org/exhibits/show/the-age-of-sodomitical-sin/1660s/sodomy-law-the-duke-of-yorks-l Sweden https://rikosjarakkaus.poliisimuseo.fi/en/kriminalisoinnin-juuret/ Russia https://www.refworld.org/en/download/118860 Chiricahua Apache / 1886 endpoint https://www.nps.gov/chir/learn/historyculture/post-apache-wars.htm |