NEW DELHI: Tracing the history of the oppressive Section 377 , Justice R F Nariman said even Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, who framed the Indian Penal Code , had proposed a lesser sentence for the 'crime' of homosexuality in the draft IPC of 1837."What is remarkable for the time in which he lived is the fact that Lord Macaulay would punish touching another person for the purpose of gratifying 'unnatural lust' without their 'free and intelligent consent' with a term of imprisonment extendable to life while the penalty for the same offence, when consensual, would be imprisonment for a maximum term of 14 years," he said.He said in the western world, given the fact that both Judaism and Christianity outlawed sexual intercourse by same-sex couples, such offences were decided by ecclesiastical courts. "It is only as a result of Henry VIII breaking with the Roman Catholic Church that legislation in his reign, namely the Buggery Act of 1533, prohibited the 'offence' of buggery committed with mankind or beast," Justice Nariman said.Macaulay, as head of the first law commission appointed by East India Company in 1833, had submitted a draft penal code in 1837. But it came into force in 1862 having been interupted by the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857.