Christianity, Islam and Modernity: Explaining Prohibitions on Homosexuality in UN Member States

Abstract

This article investigates why homosexual acts are still banned in 77 countries. It extends the current state of research by focusing on the religious roots of these bans. Previous studies have analysed the influence of Islam on prohibitions of same‐sex sexual acts but produced contradictory findings. Moreover, the influence of the second world religion that condemns homosexuality in its scriptures – Christianity – has largely been ignored. This article shows that countries with a Muslim tradition tend to criminalise both male and female homosexuality, while predominantly Christian societies tend to prohibit only sex between men. However, the influence of the Christian tradition depends on the modernity of a country: the more modern a Christian society, the less influence traditional Christian sexual ethics have on legislation governing same‐sex sexuality. This is particularly true for countries with a Protestant tradition.

Emancipating Sexuality: Breakthroughs into a Bulwark of Tradition

“…However, among the various components of these values, support for sexual freedoms has emerged more recently and most rapidly. At the same time, sexual freedoms remain an especially contested domain of emancipation because conservative forces, most notably religion, concentrate their resistance here (Frank et al 2010; Hildebrandt 2014; Doebler 2015). …”

Attitudes Toward Homosexuality and Perceptions of the United States Abroad*

“…The combination of domestic conditions (including level of democracy) and international trends contributes to various countries granting gay rights, while legal path dependence is key to decriminalization of homosexuality cross‐nationally (Sommer and Asal, ; Asal, Sommer, and Harwood, :323). Hildebrandt () argues that religious variables and colonial legacies help explain cross‐national variation globally whereby some countries criminalize homosexuality while others do not. In terms of global trends, intolerance of homosexuality has declined between 1980 and 2000, most dramatically in postindustrial democracies.…”

Religious tides: The time‐variant effect of religion on morality policies

“…The findings of these analyses underline the importance of religious factors for explaining morality policy outputs (see also Asal et al . ; Engeli & Rothmayr Allison ; Hildebrandt ).…”

“…Others have developed more specific conceptual approaches that describe how religious influence on public policy can unfold, including the presence of a secular-religious party cleavage (Engeli et al 2012), religious interest groups (Fink 2008), and societal mobilization, as well as the historical institutional configuration of the relationship between church and state (Minkenberg 2002(Minkenberg , 2003. The findings of these analyses underline the importance of religious factors for explaining morality policy outputs (see also Asal et al 2013;Engeli & Rothmayr Allison 2013;Hildebrandt 2015).…”