Since it’s LGBT History month in the UK, I’m just gonna grab the opportunity to mention something less than awesome that got imported into Asia during the era of Western colonialism.
Homophobia.
Above, I’ve got a little chart I drew up for my recent lecture, Southeast Gaysia!, about LGBT heritage and activism in the ASEAN region. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Southeast Asian country with the least homophobic laws - Thailand - is the only one that never got colonised.
European taboos about same-sex love were imported in various ways: through Christian missions, through medical assessments of psychology - and, in the case of British colonies, through the law. Former British colonies all over the world, in Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and Oceania, are mostly still saddled with a “gross indecency” law that forbids sex between men - a law the Brits only had the good sense to repeal in 1967, when they’d given up most of their colonies already.
The result? You’ll notice that the four worst-off countries here - Singapore, Burma/Myanmar, Brunei and Malaysia - are all former British colonies. Even Indonesia, with its dangerous minority of homophobic and transphobic Muslim activists, has less discriminatory laws than we do.
More info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_377A_of_the_Penal_Code_(Singapore)
http://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/india-supreme-court-upholds-sodomy-law
http://www.policymic.com/articles/49755/a-startling-map-showing-the-state-of-homophobia-in-the-world