British Colonialism and the Criminalization of Homosexuality

Han, Enze; O'Mahoney, Joseph

Abstract

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.

Citation

Han, E., & O'Mahoney, J. British Colonialism and the Criminalization of Homosexuality. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 27(2), 268-288. https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2013.867298

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: May 2, 2014
• Deposit Date: Aug 28, 2013
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 6, 2019
• Journal: Cambridge Review of International Affairs
• Print ISSN: 0955-7571
• Electronic ISSN: 1474-449X
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 27
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 268-288
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2013.867298