The French Republic annexes Piedmont, thus extending the French Penal Code of 1791 to the annexed territory.
One of the first known same-sex couples in American history, Vermont residents Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake, begin their relationship. This couple is most strongly documented in historian Rachel Hope Cleves' 2014 book Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America.
The Duchy of Warsaw is created, re-legalizing same-sex sexual intercourse.
The French Empire annexes the States of the Church, thus extending the Napoleonic Code to the annexed territory.
The Netherlands abolish laws criminalizing homosexual conduct.
The French Empire annexes the German North Sea coast, thus extending the Napoleonic Code to the annexed territory.
The French Empire annexes the Catalonia, thus extending the Napoleonic Code to the annexed territory.
The Kingdom of Bavaria abolishes laws criminalizing homosexual conduct between consenting adults.
The Duchy of Warsaw is annexed between the Kingdom of Prussia and the Russian Empire, thus re-criminalizing same-sex sexual intercourse in Prussian annexed territory.
October 28 — The Marquis de Custine is beaten and left for dead after propositioning a male soldier in Saint-Denis. The scandal forces him out of the closet, but he recovers and lives the rest of his life as an open 'sodomite' with his partner Edward St. Barbe. Custine maintains a successful social life in Paris.
The new criminal code of the Empire of Brazil excludes the crime of sodomy, officially decriminalizing homosexualism.
The Russian Empire criminalizes muzhelozhstvo, which courts interpret to mean anal sex between men, under Article 995 of the criminal code. Men convicted were stripped of their legal rights and sent to Siberia for four to five years.
Hannover abolishes laws criminalizing homosexual conduct between consenting adults.
The United Kingdom abolishes the death penalty for buggery, replacing it with a sentence of life imprisonment. Attempted buggery carries a ten-year sentence.
A German pamphlet by the Austrian-born novelist Karl-Maria Kertbeny, published anonymously, arguing against a Prussian anti-sodomy law contains the first known use of the word "homosexual" in print.
May 15 – Paragraph 175 (known formally as §175 StGB; also known as Section 175 in English) is added to the German Criminal Code. It made homosexual acts between males a crime, and in early revisions the provision also criminalized bestiality. The Nazis broadened the law in 1935; in the prosecutions that followed, thousands died in Nazi concentration camps. It was repealed on 10 March 1994.
In the United Kingdom, the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, whose Labouchere Amendment (Clause 11) outlaws oral sex between men—but not women—is given Royal Assent by Queen Victoria. A popular legend claims that Victoria struck references to lesbianism from the Act because of her refusal to believe that women "did such things"; in reality, they had simply never been mentioned in the Act. Clause 11 reads:
Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or is a party to the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and being convicted thereof shall be liable at the discretion of the court to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.
Buggery, or anal sex between men, was already illegal.
We'wha, a lhamana of the Zuni tribe, begins a six-month stay in Washington, D. C., during which time he calls upon President Grover Cleveland.
December — Magnus Hirschfeld petitions the Reichstag to abolish Paragraph 175, the first salvo in a lifelong campaign for repeal.
