Historically in the US, anti-sodomy laws were developed as a part of church laws that were meant to punish non-procreative sex in a heterosexual or homosexual context. For many years, charges that fell under anti-sodomy laws were used as secondary charges to things like sexual assault and sex with minors. Once the gay rights movement began to take hold in the late 1960s, conservatives began using anti-sodomy laws as ammunition to legally discriminate against homosexuals. The enforcement of these laws has impacted sexual minorities in many ways, such as limiting their ability to raise children, decreasing job security, and opening many more legal doors to discrimination and persecution.
During the 1970s, nine states specifically rewrote their anti-sodomy laws to only apply to gay people. This outright persecution ruined the lives of many people. In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled that these anti-sodomy laws were constitutional, even though they discriminated against homosexuals. Though a 1996 Supreme Court case ruled that discrimination against homosexuals based on status was unconstitutional, it still held that it could be criminal to engage in homosexual acts if the law forbade it in that state.
Many individuals believe that anti-sodomy laws were laid to rest with the Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, however, that case only seems to have made the anti-sodomy laws specifically against gay people unconstitutional. Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas were the only states to be outright affected by the ruling. All other states with anti-sodomy laws had them worded in ways that could technically also apply to heterosexuals, and therefore were not overtly discriminatory towards homosexuals.
Link: https://www.aclu.org/other/why-sodomy-laws-matter