A New History of the Passions

On June 30, 1986, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld a Georgia law which makes sodomy a criminal offense. In a concurring opinion, Chiief Justice Burger explained that the court's decision was motivated in part by the traditional Judaeo-Christian condemnation of homosexual sodomy, which is stigmatized by quotation from Blackstone's Commentaries. In accordance with English common law, which became the received law of colonial Georgia, sodomy is characterized as, infamous crime against nature,' as an offense of 'deeper malignity' than rape, an heinous act 'the very mention of which is a disgrace to human nature,' and 'a crime not fit to be named.'' Yet, if there is to

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