Lord Macaulay Doesn’t Like The Way You Have Sex

The British Empire: ruining gay sex for everybody since the sixteenth century.

So claims a humorous Queerty article published back in December, just after the Indian Supreme Court, in an affront to the rights of queer Indians, voted to re-criminalize “carnal intercourse against the order of nature”—code for any sexual activity besides heterosexual vaginal penetration.

It was a decision that took many local activists by surprise: the Delhi High Court had already struck down the statue in 2009, leading many to believe that the Supreme Court would easily follow suit. And the verdict prompted action: Indian queer activists and allies around the world fiercely protested the reinstituted statute.

The law in question: Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, passed originally in 1861 under Lord Macaulay, an agent of British colonialism in the subcontinent.

Fast forward to February 24. Just over two months after the Indian court’s decision, an even harsher bill was signed into law by President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. Criminalizing not only gay sex but also “aiding and abetting homosexuality,” the legislation will impose strict punishment—up to life imprisonment—for those found guilty of “aggravated homsexuality.” Long-debated by the Ugandan parliament, the law has inspired an outcry from gay rights groups and foreign governments; some Western countries have already withdrawn aid.

Uganda’s anti-gay measure is a contemporary initiative--not the ratification of an 150-year-old prohibition. Nonetheless, Uganda, like India, is a former British colony, and it, too, inherited British anti-sodomy laws. And Uganda and India aren’t alone: the British enforced these rules in almost forty Commonwealth countries. In the majority of these places, they’re still on the books.

The history of colonial sexual regulation gives us insight into how “tradition” and “modernity” are configured in contemporary debates about gay rights across the globe. It also leads us to question Western notions about the rigid “traditionalism” of post-colonial societies—whose folkways, just like those of their former colonizers, are in flux and informed by cross-cultural contact. We also use these histories to challenge concepts of “traditional” culture invoked by those who situate homosexuality as a strictly Western phenomenon.

To state the obvious, we know that homosexuality is not an export of the modern West at all. Numerous scholars have written about the role of homoeroticism in a number of pre-colonial societies: in India alone textual examples range from the Kama Sutra to the traditional Urdu ghazal.  This is just as true in Western history: anyone who has studied the ancient Greeks or Boston marriages realizes that sexual diversity as much a part of human events as fire.

“Tradition” is a slippery talking point. It’s one evoked by both pro- and anti- gay agendas. And it’s often about a lot more than how people are having sex.

The Washington Post, for example, in an article tacitly condemning the Supreme Court ruling, characterizes India as a “still-traditional” society—implying that this “traditionalism” is at least partly to blame for the setback to gay rights. In a similar vein, yet with an opposite ideological slant, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, spokesperson of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), conjures tradition in support of Section 377: “We can’t bring Western culture into our society and culture,” he says.

In Uganda, similar rhetoric is at play. President Museveni has been particularly strong in articulating his approval of the law as more than just a statement against the desirability of homosexuality: rather, he argues, it’s a statement of self-determination. "Outsiders cannot dictate to us,” Museveni said in a speech, referring to the protests of foreign governments and NGOs. “This is our country. I advise friends from the West not to make this an issue, because if they make it an issue the more they will lose.”

These discourses of traditionalism force the debate into an impossible binary, as Indian and Ugandan politicians claim the anti-colonial mantle and their Western counterparts invoke the rhetoric of human rights. Yet a historicized view allows us to see beyond these false narratives: Western powers are not universal champions of individual rights and self-determination, as colonial sodomy laws (and, indeed, the entire colonial project) tell us. And post-colonial nations are not necessarily “traditionally” opposed to gay rights: an examination of the complex history of sexuality discounts this as well.

In this tussle over the meaning of tradition, it’s not local politicians or, as Museveni claims, Western aid groups who risk the biggest losses: it’s local queer populations, mobilized in these debates not as humans, but as symbols.

Reina A.E. Gattuso ’15 is joint literature and studies of women, gender, and sexuality concentrator in Adams House. Her column appears on alternate Tuesdays.