During the
French Revolution in 1791, the
National Constituent Assembly abolished the law against homosexuality as part of adopting a new legal code without the influence of Christianity. Although the assembly never discussed homosexuality, it has been legal in France ever since. Previously it could be punished by
burning to death, although this was infrequently enforced. The abolition of criminality for sodomy was codified in the
1810 penal code. The decriminalization of homosexuality spread across Europe by Napoleon's conquests in the
Napoleonic Wars and the adoption of
civil law and penal codes on the French model, leading to abolition of criminality in many jurisdictions and replacement of death with imprisonment in others. Via military occupation or emulation of the French criminal code, the Scandinavian countries, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, Japan, and their colonies and territories—including much of Latin America—decriminalized homosexuality. Confirmed by the French Criminal Code of 1810 and applied in the Napoleonic empire, decriminalization then became definitive in some states that emerged from the empire (Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, some Swiss cantons), but was temporary in others which recriminalized in part (some Italian states) or in whole (Germany, Spain) in the 19th or 20th century. It is the exception rather than the rule that civil law systems criminalized homosexuality. Former French colonies are less likely than British ones to criminalize homosexuality, although such laws have been added in some colonies that adopted French criminal codes, including Egypt, Tunisia, and Lebanon. The
Ottoman Empire is often considered to have decriminalized homosexuality in 1858, when it adopted a French-inspired criminal code, but Elif Ceylan Özsoy argues that homosexuality was already decriminalized and this change of law actually penalized homosexuality more harshly than before, because it introduced higher penalties for public displays of same-sex affection.
Soviet Union The Soviet government of the
Russian Soviet Republic (RSFSR) decriminalised homosexuality in December 1917, following the October Revolution and the discarding of the Legal Code of Tsarist Russia. The legalisation of homosexuality was confirmed in the RSFSR Penal Code of 1922, and following its redrafting in 1926. According to Dan Healey, archival material that became widely available following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 "demonstrates a principled intent to decriminalize the act between consenting adults, expressed from the earliest efforts to write a socialist criminal code in 1918 to the eventual adoption of legislation in 1922." The Bolsheviks also rescinded Tsarist legal bans on homosexual civil and political rights, especially in the area of state employment. In 1918,
Georgy Chicherin, a homosexual man who kept his homosexuality hidden, was appointed as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR. In 1923, Chicherin was also appointed People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, a position he held until 1930. In the early 1920s, the Soviet government and scientific community took a great deal of interest in sexual research, sexual emancipation and homosexual emancipation. In January 1923, the Soviet Union sent delegates from the Commissariat of Health led by Commissar of Health Semashko to the German
Institute for Sexual Research as well as to some international conferences on human sexuality between 1921 and 1930, where they expressed support for the legalisation of adult, private and consensual homosexual relations and the improvement of homosexual rights in all nations. Such delegations and research were sent and authorised and supported by the People's Commissariat for Health under Commissar Semashko. Similar criminal laws were enacted in
Uzbekistan in 1926 and in
Turkmenistan the following year. Despite decriminalising homosexuality in 1917, wider Soviet social policy on the matter of wider homosexual rights and the treatment of homosexual people in the 1920s was often mixed. The Soviet courts still tried to repress sexual variation even when homosexuality was not a crime. In the late 1920s, the Soviet government’s stance towards homosexuality and homosexual rights underwent a change, and it reversed its earlier openness to same-sex sexuality by implementing laws criminalizing male homosexuality in 1934.
Australia Until 1899, the death penalty could be applied to cases of buggery. In each jurisdiction except for Northern Territory, decriminalization followed grassroots campaigns for change.
South Australia In 1975, South Australia was the first state to decriminalize homosexuality following the murder of University of Adelaide Law lecturer
George Duncan who was thrown into the River Torrens by a group of men at a gay beat.
Victoria The death penalty remained as the maximum penalty until 1949.
Northern Territory Decriminalization happened in 1983 under the
Everingham Country Liberal Party Government. Adherence to Islam is also a major predictor of maintaining laws criminalizing homosexuality and the death penalty for it. In some countries, criminalization of homosexuality derives from the application of
sharia law. State interference in religious matters, for example
religious courts having jurisdiction beyond family law or bans on
interfaith marriage, is strongly correlated with maintaining the criminalization of homosexuality. ==See also==