Last edited: April 14, 2007


Arizona

  • Statute: 13-1411, Crime Against Nature, Repealed 2001
  • Penalty: 30 days/$500
  • Classification: Misdemeanor
  • Restrictions: None
  • Statute: 13-1412, Lewd and Lascivious Acts, Repealed 2001
  • Penalty: 30 days/$500
  • Classification: Misdemeanor
  • Restrictions: None

Statute

13-1411. Crime against nature; classification

A person who knowingly and without force commits the infamous crime against nature with an adult is guilty of a class 3 misdemeanor.

13-1412. Lewd and lascivious acts; classification

A person who knowingly and without force commits, in any unnatural manner, any lewd or lascivious act upon or with the body or any part or member thereof of a male or female adult, with the intent of arousing, appealing to or gratifying the lust, passion or sexual desires of either of such persons, is guilty of a class 3 misdemeanor.

History

            1913     Just seven months after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the common-law definition of sodomy did not permit prosecutions for fellatio, the legislature changed the law. Although a complete recompilation of state law was adopted, in which the compiler was denied “any power to change or modify or make any law or laws,” the sodomy law was changed to include “the penetration of the mouth of any human being by the organ of any male person.” Another new law adopted in the Code was that a wife was considered competent to testify against her husband, but not vice versa, in a trial for “the crime against nature, or any similar offense[.]”

            1944     The Arizona Supreme Court is the first in the nation to receive a sodomy case in which an explicit right to privacy is raised. The Court did not address the claim; it merely ignored it.

            1962     The Arizona Supreme Court upholds a conviction in the only known published sodomy case in which a man arrested for sodomy accuses the arresting officer of being attracted to other men.

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