In 2004, Massachusetts became the first US state to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, and the sixth jurisdiction worldwide, after the Netherlands, Belgium, Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec.
[12] In October 1636, Reverend John Cotton submitted a legal code for Massachusetts Bay, which included the death penalty as a crime for sodomy, adultery, incest, and other offenses.
[21][25] Years prior, Reverend Samuel Danforth of Duxbury anonymously published a sermon on "sins of Sodom" after the execution of Benjamin Goad for bestiality led to "criticism in Massachusetts of the late 1600s".
Scholar Robert F. Oaks argued that changes to sodomy laws, which implemented "strict legal procedures", reduced the number of convictions and arrests for "homosexual activity".
[29] Colin L. Talley, a public health scholar, concluded that in British North America, including Massachusetts, statutes against sodomy were "largely unenforced", with ambivalence toward "same-sex eroticism", and stated that such behavior was common[30] while historian Edmond S. Morgan stated that 17th century New England records give the impression of "fairly common" illicit sexual intercourse.
[32] Scholar John M. Murrin stated that treatment of men or boys "accused of sodomy" in New England mirrored practices in other parts of British North America.
[33] The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 included a provision making sodomy a crime, based on the Buggery Act 1533 in the United Kingdom.
[25][35] Massachusetts law was revised again in 1835 to eliminate solitary confinement as a punishment, but increasing the sentence for sodomy to twenty years of hard labor.
In the case, Commonwealth v. Dill, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court stated that the indictment that a defendant committed "a certain unnatural and lascivious act" was sufficient.
[40] In another case under the 1887 law, Commonwealth v. Delano, in 1908, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court stated that "any and all unnatural and lascivious acts" were outlawed.
[42][43] In January 1921, in the case of Commonwealth v. Porter, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld a conviction of an individual for "maintaining a nuisance" where "indecent and unnatural acts" took place.
In the case of Jaquith v. Commonwealth in 1954, the court stated that the existing sodomy statute was constitutional[50] and the court permitted sodomy convictions "based largely on circumstantial evidence" in the 1959 case of Commonwealth v. Marshall[51] In 1972, a proposed criminal code for Massachusetts was published, which would have repealed "crime against nature" and "unnatural and lascivious acts" laws, but the code was never enacted.
[27] In the same year, in Commonwealth v. Balthazar, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the statute which prohibited "any unnatural and lascivious act with another person" was inapplicable to "private, consensual conduct of adults".
"[27] In the case of Doe v. Attorney General (1997), the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that a man convicted of engaging in "unnatural acts" on an undercover officer could not suffer legal consequences without due process.
[60] The Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies were founded by the Pilgrims and Puritans, who were known for their adherence to strict social and gender hierarchies.
[61] Laws were passed to require unmarried members of the colonies to live within established households, in an effort to ensure that sexual behavior was controlled.
[66] The only known description of two women engaging in sex from this period comes from 1649, when Plymouth residents Sarah White Norman and Mary Hammon were charged with "lewd behavior…upon a bed".
[67] In 1648, Sarah White Norman and Mary Vincent Hammon, of Massachusetts, were prosecuted for "lewd behavior with each other upon a bed"; their trial documents are the only known record of sex between female English colonists in North America in the 17th century,[68][69][66] and may be the only conviction for lesbianism in American history.
[74] In 1755, a Massachusetts soldier named Bickerstaff, at Lake George, received a sentence of 100 lashes for swearing and a "sodomitical attempt", and was publicly humiliated, but not executed.
[76] In April 1771, an advertisement in a Boston newspaper calling for the return of an enslaved person, Cato, who was "well known by the name of Miss Betty Cooper".
[83][84][85] In June 1868, Samuel M. Andrews was indicted by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for the murder of Cornelius Holmes, his "dear friend and long–term companion", with the sexual nature of the crime generating public attention.
They conducted more than 30 interviews behind closed doors and took action against eight students, a recent graduate, and an assistant professor for charges of homosexual activity.
[92] This ad hoc tribunal was later written about by William Wright in his 304-page book, Harvard's Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals.
[93] In the 1930s, Bostonian Prescott Townsend testified multiple times at the State House in favor of a bill decriminalizing same-sex activity.
[62] In the 1950s, Prescott Townsend founded the Boston chapter of the Mattachine Society,[94] and began appearing on radio shows to advocate repealing bans against same-sex sex and laws "pertaining to chastity, morality, and good order".
Gerry Studds, a Massachusetts representative, became the first openly gay Congressman following the 1983 congressional page sex scandal, although his sexuality was already known to some of his constituents.
[105][7] In late 1987, Massachusetts activists organized MASS ACT OUT, whose aim was to fight homophobia and to criticize the response of mainstream society to the AIDS crisis.
[10] In 2011, then-governor Deval Patrick issued an executive order banning discrimination against transgender employees by the state or its contractors.
[58] In 2016, the Massachusetts Senate and House of Representatives approved a bill which would protect transgender individuals against discrimination in public accommodations.
The early 2020s saw a number of smaller Pride marches and festivals organized in Massachusetts towns and cities, including Hamilton, Lynn, Newburyport, Revere, Salem, Swampscott, Topsfield, and Wenham.