India re-instates colonial law to criminalize homosexuality. Blame the British!

[Sheilbh]

Your own article notes that many French, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and Belgian ex-colonies have high penalties for gay sex too. However, it lets the colonizers off the hook in those cases because the laws were introduced after de-colonization

As I say I think there's two big predictors one is Islam and the other is the British Empire. The many former French and Spanish colonies that have imposed penalties for sodomy are Muslim. By my count, of the 80 countries that have a penalty for it, only 8 have neither British colonial history or a Muslim majority population.

An astute reader will notice that something the British ex-colonies and other European ex-colonies that punish homosex have in common, is a culture that frowns on homosex - either because of tradition pre-dating colonialism, or as an anti-Western thing - which even applies to places that were never colonized, like Russia.

In short, the fact that some of these countries were former British colonies isn't a very strong predictive factor. Sure, the Brits had a penal code that made gay sex illegal. The interesting thing is why some contries have deliberately chosen, many years later, to retain it (or introduce it, in places which did not have it - like other former Euro-colonies).

Again there's the importance of Islam, which is mentioned in the article. Incidentally, in many former British colonies with a Muslim majority the British colonial law is still used - Pakistan for example just added a sharia-inspired offence for sodomy+kidnapping. Aside from that very few former Euro-colonies have banned homosexuality.

The problem with saying it's because the culture frowns on the gays, while it's surely part of it, is that I think it's begging the question. It doesn't explain why Sierra Leone and Ghana ban homosexuality, but Burkina Faso and Cote d'Ivoire don't. The same applies to Barbados against less developed non-British Caribbean islands. It seems particularly extraordinary in, say, Papua New Guinea that did have a culture which was more tolerant of sodomy.

Did the British Empire just happen to colonise the most virulently homophobic parts of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific?

What's the theory here - that the former Brit colonies just forgot the laws were on the books since decolonization? That's not what has happened. See India.

I think I'd say it's there's two things that could be going on.

Possibly there is an inertia and forgetfulness around the law. It's the definition of something that's a minority interest. As it affects relatively few people it's easy to ignore, or just not care about. I mean look at the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain. It happened in England in 1967, in Scotland in 1981, in Northern Ireland in 1982, by 1992 in all the Channel Islands and in the Isle of Man in 1994. Northern Ireland aside I don't think those areas were wildly more homophobic than England or parts of the US that had abolished the sodomy laws. I think they just didn't care very much.

This is, I think, sort of what's happened in, say, Singapore. The minister in charge actually sounded relatively sympathetic to the gays and I believe Singaporean society is generally pretty tolerant. But, he said it's a lot of work to repeal the law and the nuclear family is a core part of Singaporean values so they'll keep the prohibition - from the IPC - in place.

The other possibility is that the 19th century British jurists were right and law shapes culture. Sodomy received criminal punishment and far more opprobrium in the British Empire than other colonial empires for a century and it has lingered there longer. I can't think of any examples of Francophone African politicians declaring that 'homosexuality is unAfrican' in the way that is common in former British colonies - see Robert Mugabe, Daniel Arap Moi, the government of Zambia or the numerous politicians in Uganda.

[Queequeg]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Ethiopia

Though TBH looking through the article on LGBT rights in Africa there does seem to be a correlation between British colonization and stiff anti-sodomy laws, I think it's very strange that you assume that there wouldn't be anti-sodomy laws in India without British colonial influence given the history of Islamic domination of the subcontinent. 

[Sheilbh]

I think it's very strange that you assume that there wouldn't be anti-sodomy laws in India without British colonial influence given the history of Islamic domination of the subcontinent.

I don't assume that though

My understanding though is that Islamic law was applied to Muslims and customary law to Hindus. The British were horrified by, in their view, the prevalence of beggars, catamites and eunuchs that were tolerated by Hindu society and it was linked, in their mind, to sodomy.

Edit: 

Though TBH looking through the article on LGBT rights in Africa there does seem to be a correlation between British colonization and stiff anti-sodomy laws

Also the Americas and the Pacific islands.

[Queequeg]

I got in a pretty in-depth argument about this on FB with a gay expat friend in Russia. 

I argued that some kind of Modernist attempt at enforcing internationalized (read; homophobic, prejudiced against non-reproductive sex) sexual norms was inevitable in the wake of the decolonization process.  Southern China was never officially colonized by anyone, but the popular pederasty of Fujian province or elite homosexual practices all effectively died out between Sun Yat-sen and Deng Xiaoping. 

I think in India you would have inevitably seen something similar.  Idiosyncratic regional or caste approaches to sexuality would have dissolved in to a national consensus based on Western-educated elite opinions.

I eventually ended up defending Victorian mores, which is realistically how I spend maybe 20% of my time.  I also generally resent the near-universal assumption of pre/non-Abrahamic non-homophobia, though I'm not accusing you of that. 

[garbon]

I eventually ended up defending Victorian mores, which is realistically how I spend maybe 20% of my time.

Tsk, tsk.