Integration into the Roman Empire

The misunderstanding of the above words formed the basis for their integration into the Roman Empire's Constitutions and laws condemning homosexuals to death by castration and burning alive. This was the earliest time in which this occurred, and was based on the "evidence" of the myth of Sodom, Jesus' sermon on the mount and Paul of Tarsus' Letters to The Corinthians and to Timothy.

The Roman Catholic Church and later churches

The Roman Empires' laws were subsumed into the canon of the Roman Catholic Church leading to the murder of John de Wettre, the first homosexual known to be burned alive in 1292 for the heretical sin of homosexuality. Click here to read more about John de Wettre.

The pejorative term for homosexual sex, 'sodomy', has been dealt with above as being an ecclesiastical crime of heresy which became a civil crime requiring capital punishment. The second pejorative term, 'buggery', has an identical history and usage. In 208 Pope Innocent III initiated war against the Cathars over the Albigensian heresy. This was conducted in 209 by Norman Simon de Montfort, who massacred the Cathars. The Albigensian heresy was also known as the Bulgarian heresy and became popularised in the terms Bulgars, Bulgari, Bulgares and Bougres. The term later in French law became Bougrerie, which translated as heretic, and came to mean sodomy exclusively. It appeared in English law in 1533 as 'Buggery' and firmly established the doctrinal dissent of heresy as the sexual sin of sodomy. In 1670 Thomas Blount in his dictionary Glossographia defined Buggerie as 'carnalis copula contra naturem' (the sexual sin against nature) and clearly established 'Buggery' in the English language as meaning illegal and heretical homosexual acts between males.

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