5.The primarily sexual meaning of the word sodomia for Christians did not evolve before the
500s CE. It was Byzantine Emperor Justinian I who in his novels no. 77 (dating 538) and
no. 141 (dating 559) amended to his Corpus iuris civilis was the first to declare that
Sodom's sin had been specifically same-sex activities and desire for them in order to
create homosexual scapegoats for recent earthquakes and other disasters of his time, but
most of all to enact anti-homosexual laws that he used upon personal as well as political
opponents in case he could not prove them guilty of anything else.
