Seeds of Prejudice: The Impact of British Colonization on Attitudes towards Sexual Minorities

This paper provides the first causal test of the widely debated hypothesis that British colonial institutions promoted sexual prejudice—defined as negative attitudes toward sexual minorities—in postcolonial societies. We document five main findings. First, after accounting for differences in contemporary economic development, OLS estimates from a cross-country sample of former European colonies reveal that former British colonies exhibit higher sexual prejudice than those of other European powers. Second, Geo-RDD estimates show that former British colonies have significantly greater sexual prejudice than former Portuguese colonies in Southern and Eastern Africa, where local norms did not systematically condemn same-sex relations. Third, Geo-RDD estimates indicate that former British and French colonies display similar levels of sexual prejudice in Western Africa, where a higher share of the population adheres to religious norms condemning same-sex acts. Fourth, additional evidence from areas in South America and Southeast Asia not characterized by homophobic social norms before colonization reinforces the external validity of our findings from Southeastern Africa. Finally, mechanisms analysis suggests that the persistence of sodomy laws fully accounts for the negative association between British colonial origin and contemporary sexual prejudice across countries. Overall, our results indicate that British colonial origin notably increased sexual prejudice in societies with social norms different from the penal codes imposed by colonizers.