Updated from public sources · June 2026
The law tracker
A curated desk, not a 193-country dump. Headline numbers come from ILGA World. Rows are jurisdictions we can describe with a citation and a straight face.
65 UN members criminalizing consensual same-sex acts
7 Death penalty prescribed in law
5 Death penalty legally uncertain
Where the remaining felonies cluster
Bars are a reading aid — relative concentration of remaining criminalization, not a precise country count. Europe’s stub is mostly Russia-shaped. The Caribbean is moving. Africa and the Middle East still hold most of the live felonies.
| Jurisdiction | Region | Status | Year | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States (federal constitutional rule) | United States | Decriminalized | 2003 | Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), held that private consensual adult sodomy statutes violate due process. Leftover state code is unenforceable against consenting adults. |
| Texas Penal Code § 21.06 | United States | On the books | 2003 | The statute struck down in Lawrence still sits in the Texas code as “homosexual conduct,” a Class C misdemeanor on paper. |
| Florida | United States | On the books | — | Unnatural and lascivious act statute remains in the code; unenforceable against consenting adults after Lawrence. |
| Georgia | United States | On the books | 1998 | O.C.G.A. § 16-6-2 text remains; Georgia’s own Supreme Court had already limited it before Lawrence. |
| Kansas | United States | On the books | — | Same-sex-only sodomy language remains a facial equal-protection problem as well as a Lawrence problem. |
| Kentucky | United States | On the books | 1992 | Commonwealth v. Wasson (1992) voided the law under the state constitution; text lingered. |
| Louisiana | United States | On the books | — | “Crime against nature” statute flagged as unconstitutional in a 2016 legislative report; still printed. |
| Massachusetts | United States | On the books | — | Crime-against-nature felony language remains in the General Laws, unused against consenting adults. |
| Michigan | United States | On the books | — | Crime against nature / sodomy felony text remains; repeal efforts have been periodic. |
| Mississippi | United States | On the books | — | Unnatural intercourse felony remains on the books. |
| North Carolina | United States | On the books | — | Crime against nature (N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-177) still printed as a felony. |
| Oklahoma | United States | On the books | — | Crime against nature felony language remains. |
| South Carolina | United States | On the books | — | Buggery statute remains a listed felony. |
| Illinois | United States | Decriminalized | 1961 | First U.S. state to repeal a sodomy ban, via the 1961 criminal code revision (effective 1962). |
| India | Asia | Decriminalized | 2018 | Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India read down colonial Section 377 for consensual adults. Other 377-style offences still exist in several former British colonies. |
| Singapore | Asia | Decriminalized | 2022 | Parliament repealed 377A, the male-male “gross indecency” offence inherited from the Straits Settlements. |
| Botswana | Africa | Decriminalized | 2019–2026 | Courts struck colonial sodomy offences; remaining provisions were later removed from the statute book (ILGA, 2026). |
| Namibia | Africa | Decriminalized | 2024 | High Court struck down common-law sodomy and unnatural-sexual-offences rules. |
| Mauritius | Africa | Decriminalized | 2023 | Supreme Court held the colonial sodomy offence unconstitutional. |
| Saint Lucia | Caribbean | Decriminalized | 2025 | Decriminalised consensual same-sex acts (ILGA World, 2026). |
| Dominica | Caribbean | Decriminalized | 2024 | Court struck buggery and gross-indecency offences for consenting adults. |
| Barbados | Caribbean | Decriminalized | 2022 | High Court invalidated buggery and serious-indecency laws. |
| Trinidad and Tobago | Caribbean | Criminalized | 2025 | A prior decriminalisation ruling was reversed in 2025 — one of the reasons the global count rose for the first time in nearly a decade. |
| Jamaica | Caribbean | Criminalized | — | Offences Against the Person Act still contains buggery and gross-indecency provisions of colonial origin. |
| Guyana | Caribbean | Criminalized | — | Among the last South American jurisdictions with a colonial buggery offence still in force. |
| Uganda | Africa | Death penalty | 2023 | Anti-Homosexuality Act includes death penalty for “aggravated” offences; far broader than the old colonial sodomy clause. |
| Nigeria | Africa | Criminalized | 2014 | Criminal and Penal Codes plus the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act; northern states applying certain sharia codes prescribe death. |
| Ghana | Africa | Criminalized | — | Existing unnatural-carnal-knowledge offence; parliament has advanced harsher “anti-LGBTQ” legislation in the 2020s. |
| Senegal | Africa | Criminalized | 2025 | Tightened criminalising provisions in 2025, with a wave of arrests reported by ILGA World. |
| Burkina Faso | Africa | Criminalized | 2025 | Introduced a criminalising law for the first time in 2025 (ILGA World). |
| Mali | Africa | Criminalized | 2025 | Adopted new anti-homosexuality criminal law in 2025. |
| Kenya | Africa | Criminalized | — | Penal Code ss. 162, 165 — colonial “carnal knowledge against the order of nature.” Court challenges have not yet produced full repeal. |
| South Africa | Africa | Decriminalized | 1998 | National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality v. Minister of Justice struck the common-law crime of sodomy. |
| Iran | Middle East | Death penalty | — | Islamic Penal Code prescribes death for certain same-sex sexual acts. Enforcement is a documented human-rights concern. |
| Saudi Arabia | Middle East | Death penalty | — | No written penal code in the civilian sense; hudud and ta’zir practice can include death for same-sex intercourse. |
| Brunei | Asia | Death penalty | 2019 | Revised sharia penal code phased in death by stoning for certain same-sex acts; international outcry followed. |
| Pakistan | Asia | Criminalized | — | Section 377 of the Pakistan Penal Code — the same colonial formula India inherited. |
| Bangladesh | Asia | Criminalized | — | Section 377 remains in force. |
| Sri Lanka | Asia | Criminalized | — | Sections 365 and 365A; a repeal bill has been discussed in parliament. |
| Malaysia | Asia | Criminalized | — | Penal Code 377 plus state sharia offences; also used against expression and association. |
| Indonesia | Asia | Partial / local | — | No national sodomy offence for consenting adults, but Aceh’s qanun jinayat and some local rules criminalise same-sex acts. |
| China | Asia | Decriminalized | 1997 | Hooliganism offence removed in 1997. Homosexuality is not a crime; other laws have been used against speech and assembly. |
| Russia | Europe | De facto | 2013–2023 | Sodomy as such was decriminalised in 1993; “gay propaganda” laws and the 2023 “extremist movement” designation function as de facto criminalisation of public queer life. |
| United Kingdom | Europe | Decriminalized | 1967–1982 | Sexual Offences Act 1967 (England & Wales); later Scotland and Northern Ireland. The word “buggery” is the local cousin of “sodomy.” |
| Germany | Europe | Decriminalized | 1969–1994 | Paragraph 175, used by the Nazis and kept (in modified form) after the war, was fully deleted in 1994. See the documentary Paragraph 175. |
| France | Europe | Decriminalized | 1791 | The Revolutionary Code silently dropped sodomy from the list of crimes — one of the earliest European decriminalisations. |
| Australia | Oceania | Decriminalized | 1975–1997 | State-by-state repeal; Tasmania last, after Toonen v. Australia (UN HRC, 1994). |
| Papua New Guinea | Oceania | Criminalized | — | Criminal Code still contains the colonial “against the order of nature” offence. |
| Canada | Americas | Decriminalized | 1969 | Pierre Trudeau’s line — “the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation” — attached to a partial repeal that later needed more work. |
| Mexico | Americas | Decriminalized | — | No federal sodomy felony for consenting adults; some local morality ordinances still harass. |
| Brazil | Americas | Decriminalized | 1830 | Imperial Criminal Code omitted sodomy — unusually early for the hemisphere. |
| Argentina | Americas | Decriminalized | — | No national sodomy crime for consenting adults; 2010 marriage equality made the legal story larger than repeal. |
Educational material, not a diagnosis, prescription, or legal opinion. Consenting adults only. Laws change; check primary sources and a licensed professional in your jurisdiction. If you are in danger, local emergency services come first.