It's important to recognize that the term homosexual or homosexuality are modern terms and ideas. Even the idea of sexuality as a distinct form of behavior is a modern one.

"Though some colonists recognized in themselves or their neighbors an ongoing attraction toward members of the same sex, the modern paradigm of sexual orientation would have made little sense to them. They used a range of different assumptions and conceptual frameworks to understand "sodomitical actings." Strictly speaking, men who practiced sodomy during this period did not engage in homosexual acts any more than men who had sex with women engaged in heterosexual acts. Even the word sexuality can obscure more than it illuminates when applied to a premodern context" ^1

The specific description of homosexual behavior in North America at least was most often some version of the word "sodomy". Where the word or a variation of it wasn't used, the specific act was described.

• The Reverend Francis Higginson was on the ship Talbot in 1619 and recorded in his journal that he and other prominent people aboard the ship "examined five beastly sodomitical boys, wh[o] confessed their wickedness not to be named."

Here we can see the word "sodomitical" and the euphemism "wickedness not to be named"

• There's a case involving a man named Nicholas Sension who lived in Windor, Connecticut in the mid-17th century and was repeatedly accused of trying to seduce other men and boys. Some of the descriptions are quite specific:

• "[he] threw me on the chest, and took hold of my privy parts" or

• "I went out upon the bank to dry myself [after swimming], and the said Sension came to me with his yard or member erected in his hands, and desired me to lie on my belly, and strove with me, but I went away from him".

• Again the same Sension was accused of attempting to seduce/rape another man's servant and the testimony of the servant describes the specific act "strove to turn [the servant's] back parts upwards and attempted with his yard to enter his body."

Here we see the exact act described, though the euphemism "yard" or "member" is used in lieu of the word penis.

• Samuel Danforth a preacher from Roxbury, Massachusetts gave a sermon in which he condemned all sorts of sexual activity. In talking about homosexual acts he described the "filthiness committed by parties of the same sex"

• In the 1640s William Bradford also condemned sexual impropriety and differentiated between heterosexual acts and those of a homosexual nature or bestiality. "that which is worse, even sodomy and buggery (things fearful to name)."

• In 1654 the preacher Jonathan Mitchell used the phrase "unnatural pollutions" to describe homosexual acts (other forms of sexual impropriety would generally be labeled something like "uncleanness")

• In 1693 Cotton Mather gave a sermon in which he called both bestiality and sodomy "unutterable abominations and confusions"

• The Reverend Charles Chauncy described it as the "unnatural lusts of men with men, or woman with woman," and a 1636 Massachusetts law used similar language, describing homosexual acts as a "a carnal fellowship of man with man, or woman with woman."

• In 1642 Elizabeth Johnson was whipped and fined for "unseemly practices betwixt her and another maid." and in 1649 Sara Norman and Mary Hammon were charged with the crime of "leude behaviour each with other upon a bed."

• In 1624 a man was executed fora rape committed on the ship Ambrose which was "then riding at anchor in the James River" (Chesapeake Bay area). The man was Captain Richard Cornish and his accuser was 29 year old William Couse. Cornish "by force" turned Couse "upon his belly, and so did put [him] to pain in the fundament and did wet him." On a number of subsequent occasions, according to Couse, the captain "put his hands in [Couse's] codpiece and played and kissed him."

There was also debate about whether sodomy was restricted to the act of penetration or if it included other acts as well. For example New Haven's laws allowed people to be charged with sodomy (which was a capital crime)^2 if the committed "carnal knowledge of another vessel than God in nature hath appointed to become one flesh, whether it be by abusing the contrary part of a grown woman, or child of either sex". The key phrases there are "another vessel" and "contrary part".

The law also allowed a charge of sodomy to be brought against those who had "carnal knowledge of ... [the] unripe vessel of a girl" as well as public masturbation "in the sight of others ... corrupting or tempting others to do the like, which tends to the sin of sodomy, if it be not one kind of it,". However the New Haven law was rather broad--most laws recognized only the act of penetration as being sodomy.

In 1642 the Massachusetts General Court (the legislature) sought advice on how to proceed on non-penetrative acts. There was a court case in 1637 where two men were found guilty of "guilty of lewd behaviour and unclean carriage one with another, by often spending their seed one upon another", but were not found guilty of sodomy because it wasn't clear if penetration had occurred. In 1641 another man was found guilty "unclean carriages towards men that he hath lain withall", but no mention was made of sodomy--presumably because it couldn't be proven that penetration had occurred.

1.) Source for this quote and most of the examples here is from Sexual Revolution in Early America (Gender Relations in the American Experience)

2.) Despite sodomy being illegal New Englanders appeared to be reluctant to charge people with it, as William Plaine and John Knight are the only two individuals known to have been executed in 17th century New England for the crime. In both cases the men had previously been found guilty or charged with crimes--Plaine had been accused of "committed sodomy with two persons in England" and of having "corrupted a great part of the youth of Guilford [in New Haven Colony] by masturbations, which he had committed, and provoked others to the like above a hundred times." and Knight was condemned for having attempted "a sodomitical attempt" on a teenage boy and had also been convicted of similar offenses in the past.