In law

Under most common law legal systems, the term buggery is a criminal offence with a specific legal meaning. In English law, "buggery" was first used in the Buggery Act 1533, while Section 61 of the Offences Against The Person Act 1861, entitled "Sodomy and Bestiality", defined punishments for "the abominable Crime of Buggery, committed either with Mankind or with any Animal". Neither Act defined what constituted buggery. Over the years the courts have defined buggery as including either:

1. anal intercourse by a man with a man or woman, or
2. vaginal intercourse by either a man or a woman with an animal,

but not any other form of "unnatural intercourse".

At common law consent was not a defence; nor was the fact that the parties were married. As with the crime of rape, buggery required that penetration must have occurred, but ejaculation is not necessary.

Most common law countries have now modified the law to permit anal sex between consenting adults.

Etymology

The word bugger and buggery are still commonly used in modern English as a profanity, and "buggery" is also synonymous with anal sex.

The word "bugger" was derived, via the French "bougre", from "Bulgar", that is, "Bulgarian", meaning the medieval Bulgarian heretical sect of the Bogomils, which spread into Western Europe and was claimed by the established church to be devoted to the practice of sodomy,. "Buggery" first appears in English in 1330, though "bugger" in a sexual sense is not recorded until 1555.

References

Sources

• Smith & Hogan, Criminal Law (10th ed), ISBN 0 406 94801 1