Britain did so many awful things during its empire,
it’s hard to know where to start.
But if you want an example of something that’s
still ruining lives today,
it’ll be hard to think of a better example
than the British Penal Code, also known as Section 377.
This homophobic law is the reason why being gay is still illegal
in at least 30 former British colonies.
Empires of Dirt,
a series about Europeans getting rich at the expense of everyone else.
Previously, we found out how Britain got China hooked on opium,
and how it stole $45 trillion from India.
[How the British Empire Exported Homophobia]
When the British were busy colonizing the world
between the 16th and 19th centuries,
they also exported their own laws to the places they took over.
It was kind of like the rest of the world were school kids
who had to play by their rules.
One of the laws they exported was
the charmingly named Buggery Act of 1533,
which was passed by parliament during the reign of Henry VIII,
you know, the one with the six wives.
The Buggery Act did pretty much what it said on the tin:
it banned male homosexuality and made gay sex punishable by death.
But it didn't bother to ban lesbianism,
probably because nobody really thought about women at the time.
When the British Empire got going,
the authorities were keen to enforce their idea of morality
on the people they’d colonized.
They also wanted to make sure that its soldiers and administrators
weren’t tempted to shag each other,
or their new subjects,
so they imported this anti-buggery law overseas.
Homosexuality was finally decriminalized
in England and Wales in 1967,
but not before the UK had done some extremely uncool stuff,
like force war heroes like Alan Turing
to undergo chemical castration,
or throw people in jail simply for being gay.
But although gay sex stopped being illegal
in the rest of the UK by 1982,
the laws that forbid homosexuality
are still in the penal codes of many of our former colonies.
It’s the reason why LGBTQ people in countries like Barbados, Pakistan,
Guyana, Kenya, Ghana, and Singapore, where I’m from,
still don’t have equality today.
Many of Britain’s former colonies
don’t have histories of being hateful towards LGBTQ people.
Basotho women in present-day Lesotho, Africa,
still engage in socially accepted relationships with each other.
They call each other their
Mwanga II, the 19th century king of what is now modern-day Uganda,
had sex with men
until white missionaries brought Christianity to his kingdom
and everyone changed their minds about their gay king.
Britain literally exported hatred and homophobia
to the countries it colonized.
It’s not like these laws just gather dust on the statute books;
they continue to be used against LGBTQ people to this day.
Between 2010 and 2014,
almost 600 people were prosecuted under Kenya’s anti-gay laws,
according to official government figures.
In 2010, two gay men were sentenced to 14 years’ hard labor in Malawi
after being convicted of gross indecency and unnatural acts.
They attracted the attention of the authorities
after holding an engagement party.
When the judge passed the sentence,
he said he wanted to protect the public from “people like you.”
In August 2018, 20 men were charged with illicit behavior
after a raid on a gay club in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Uganda still actively persecutes gay people to this day.
In November 2019, police raided an LGBTQ bar in Kampala,
dragging out at least 120 people and arresting them
and throwing them into the backs of vehicles.
Because institutional homophobia runs deep so many former colonies,
some countries have chosen to keep these regressive laws
in their penal codes.
In March 2020, despite the best efforts of LGBTQ activists,
a court in Singapore ruled in favor of keeping homosexuality illegal.
Jamaica was once known as the most homophobic country on Earth,
with gay people being lynched by angry mobs into the 21st century.
These days, we’ve mainly left it up to LGBTQ campaigners
to sort out the trouble that the UK left behind.
Would these countries be such difficult places for queer people
if it wasn’t for the British?
Even former prime minister Theresa May doesn’t think so.
In 2018, she said she “deeply regrets” the role that
the UK had to play in introducing these anti-gay laws
to its former colonies.
It’s a nice gesture, although extremely belated.
But saying sorry doesn't mean anything to
the people who’ve had to live in fear and hiding
all because of their sexual orientation.
Some sins you just can’t apologise away.