British Colonialism and the Criminalization of Homosexuality

Main author: Han, Enze
Other authors: O'Mahoney, Joseph
Format: Journal Article           
Online access: Click here to view record


id eprints-16939
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
description What explains the global variation in laws criminalizing homosexual conduct? Recent research has claimed that British colonialism is largely responsible for the criminalization of homosexuality around the world. This article utilizes a newly constructed dataset that includes up-to-date data on 185 countries to assess this claim. We find that British colonies are much more likely to have criminalization of homosexual conduct laws than other colonies or other states in general. This result holds after controlling for other variables that might be expected to influence the likelihood of repressive lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights legislation. However, we also find that the evidence in favour of the claim that British imperialism ‘poisoned’ societies against homosexuality is weak. British colonies do not systematically take longer to decriminalize homosexual conduct than other European colonies.
format Journal Article
author Han, Enze
author_facet Han, Enze
O'Mahoney, Joseph
authorStr Han, Enze
author_letter Han, Enze
author2 O'Mahoney, Joseph
author2Str O'Mahoney, Joseph
title British Colonialism and the Criminalization of Homosexuality
publisher Taylor and Francis
publishDate 2014
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/16939/