Sodomy Laws = The Oppressive Legacy of British Colonialism

This is astounding.  According to a new report out from Human Rights Watch (HRW), "This Alien Legacy," more than half of the world's remaining laws that criminalize homosexuality stem from one British law on homosexual conduct that was imposed on India in 1860.

We've never been terribly great at math here (Professor Brown's Calculus 101 class nearly ruined my freshman year of college).  But this one's an easy equation to figure out.  Right now, there are more than 80 countries around the world that criminalize homosexuality - punishing consensual same-sex sexual conduct with anything from hard labor to the death penalty.  More than half of these countries have these laws because, according to the HRW report, they were once British colonies.

Thanks, England.  As if Spandau Ballet wasn't bad enough of a legacy!

The report by HRW describes the "strange afterlife" of the one British Law - Section 377 - traveled to India and beyond.  Section 377 says that "Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine."

Carnal intercourse is basically a very 1860s way of saying sodomy.  And Section 377 is a very 21st century way of saying "discrimination and violence toward LGBT persons."

"This Alien Legacy" documents how this one anti-gay law infiltrated cultures and socieities across the British empire.

Colonial legislators and jurists introduced such laws, with no debates or 'cultural consultation,' to support colonial control.  They believed laws could inculcate European morality into resistant masses.  They brought in the legislation, in fact, because they thought 'native' cultures did not punish 'perverse' sex enough.  The colonized needed compulsory re-education in sexual mores.  Imperial rulers held that, as long as they sweltered through the promiscuous proximities of settler societies, 'native' viciousness and 'white' virtue had to be segregated...

Section 377 was, and is, a model law in more ways than one.  It was a colonial attempt to set standards of behavior, both to reform the colonized and to protect the colonizers against moral lapses.  It was also the first colonial "sodomy law" integrated into a penal code - and it became a model anti-sodomy law for countries far beyond India, Malaysia, and Uganda.  Its influence stretched across Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Africa, almost everywhere the British imperial flag flew.

Wow.  It's unbelievable to think that just one law could have such drastic worldwide consequences.  But sure enough, here's the rundown on the number of countries that Britain imported this law to:

Asia and the Pacific: Australia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Burma, Fiji, Hong Kong, India, Kiribati, Malaysia, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Western Samoa.

Africa: Botswana, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Nigeria, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Swaziland, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

My God, it reads like the United Nations, doesn't it?  So far, only four of these countries (Australia, Fiji, Hong Kong and New Zealand) have repealed the ban.  India's High Court is contemplating repealing the ban, and will likely issue its decision in early 2009.

For its part, the HRW report says that eliminating these laws is a human rights obligation, freeing populations from violence and fear.  The report also ties in nicely with the UN statement from earlier this week calling for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality, which so far has been endorsed by 66 countries.