SOC 201 Chapter Notes - Chapter 11: Bowers V. Hardwick, Anwar Ibrahim Sodomy Trials
Document Summary
According to emile durkheim, it is impossible for a society to exist without deviance: Societies create norms and, inevitably, some people will violate them. Any particular behavior is deviant only if people in a society have rules against that behavior. Moreover, as people change, rules may change and different behaviors may be defined as deviant (or not). Traditionally, if a student enrolled in a social problems or a sociology of deviance class, one of the topics listed on the syllabus would be homosexuality. There was little question that homosexual behavior was deviant. Indeed, until the early 1960s, homosexual acts, called sodomy or crimes against nature, were felonies in all state jurisdictions in the united states. Things began to change in the 1960s and 1970s, but as late as 1986, half of the states still had laws prohibiting sodomy.
