The emic approach is an insider's perspective, which looks at the beliefs, values, and practices of a particular culture
from the perspective of the people who live within that culture. This
approach aims to understand the cultural meaning and significance of a
particular behavior or practice, as it is understood by the people who
engage in it.
The etic approach, on the other hand, is an outsider's
perspective, which looks at a culture from the perspective of an outside
observer or researcher. This approach tends to focus on the observable
behaviors and practices of a culture, and aims to understand them in
terms of their functional or evolutionary significance. The etic
approach often involves the use of standardized
measures and frameworks to compare different cultures and may involve
the use of concepts and theories from other disciplines, such as psychology or sociology.
The emic and etic approaches each have their own strengths and
limitations, and each can be useful in understanding different aspects
of culture and behavior. Some anthropologists
argue that a combination of both approaches is necessary for a complete
understanding of a culture, while others argue that one approach may be
more appropriate depending on the specific research question being
addressed.
Definitions
"The emic approach investigates how local people think...". How they perceive and categorize the world, their rules for behavior,
what has meaning for them, and how they imagine and explain things. "The
etic (scientist-oriented) approach shifts the focus from local
observations, categories, explanations, and interpretations to those of
the anthropologist. The etic approach realizes that members of a
culture often are too involved in what they are doing... to interpret
their cultures impartially. When using the etic approach, the ethnographer emphasizes what he or she considers important."
Although emics and etics are sometimes regarded as inherently in
conflict and one can be preferred to the exclusion of the other, the
complementarity of emic and etic approaches to anthropological research
has been widely recognized, especially in the areas of interest
concerning the characteristics of human nature as well as the form and
function of human social systems.
...Emic knowledge and
interpretations are those existing within a culture, that are
'determined by local custom, meaning, and belief' (Ager and Loughry,
2004: n.p.) and best described by a 'native' of the culture. Etic
knowledge refers to generalizations about human behavior that are
considered universally true, and commonly links cultural practices to
factors of interest to the researcher, such as economic or ecological
conditions, that cultural insiders may not consider very relevant
(Morris et al., 1999).
Emic and etic approaches of understanding behavior and personality fall under the study of cultural anthropology,
which states that people are shaped by their cultures and their
subcultures, and we must account for this in the study of personality.
One way is looking at things through an emic approach. This approach "is
culture specific because it focuses on a single culture and it is
understood on its own terms." As explained below, the term "emic"
originated from the specific linguistic term "phonemic", from phoneme, which is a language-specific way of abstracting speech sounds.
An emic account is a description of behavior or a belief in
terms meaningful (consciously or unconsciously) to the actor; that is,
an emic account comes from a person within the culture. Almost anything
from within a culture can provide an emic account.
An etic account is a description of a behavior or belief by a social
analyst or scientific observer (a student or scholar of anthropology or
sociology, for example), in terms that can be applied across cultures;
that is, an etic account attempts to be 'culturally neutral', limiting
any ethnocentric, political or cultural bias or alienation by the
observer.
When these two approaches are combined, the "richest" view of a
culture or society can be understood. On its own, an emic approach would
struggle with applying overarching values to a single culture. The etic
approach is helpful in enabling researchers to see more than one aspect
of one culture, and in applying observations to cultures around the
world.
History
The terms were coined in 1954 by linguist Kenneth Pike, who argued that the tools developed for describing linguistic
behaviors could be adapted to the description of any human social
behavior. As Pike noted, social scientists have long debated whether
their knowledge is objective or subjective. Pike's innovation was to
turn away from an epistemological debate and turn instead to a methodological solution. Emic and etic are derived from the linguistic terms phonemic and phonetic, respectively, where a phone is a distinct speech sound or gesture (such distinction being referred to as phonetic), regardless of whether the exact sound is critical to the meanings of words, whereas a phoneme
is a speech sound in a given language that, if swapped with another
phoneme, could change one word to another. The possibility of a truly
objective description was discounted by Pike himself in his original
work; he proposed the emic–etic dichotomy in anthropology as a way
around philosophic issues about the very nature of objectivity.
The terms were also championed by anthropologistsWard Goodenough and Marvin Harris
with slightly different connotations from those used by Pike.
Goodenough was primarily interested in understanding the culturally
specific meaning of specific beliefs and practices; Harris was primarily
interested in explaining human behavior.
Pike, Harris, and others have argued that cultural "insiders" and "outsiders" are equally capable of producing emic and
etic accounts of their culture. Some researchers use "etic" to refer to
outsider accounts, and "emic" to refer to insider accounts.
Margaret Mead
was an anthropologist who studied the patterns of adolescence in Samoa.
She discovered that the difficulties and the transitions that
adolescents faced are culturally influenced. The hormones that are
released during puberty can be defined using an etic framework, because adolescents globally have the same hormones
being secreted. However, Mead concluded that how adolescents respond to
these hormones is greatly influenced by their cultural norms. Through
her studies, Mead found that simple classifications about behaviors and personality
could not be used because peoples’ cultures influenced their behaviors
in such a radical way. Her studies helped create an emic approach of
understanding behaviors and personality. Her research deduced that
culture has a significant impact in shaping an individual's personality.
Carl Jung, a Swiss psychoanalyst, is a researcher who took an emic approach in his studies. Jung studied mythology, religion, ancient rituals, and dreams, leading him to believe that there are archetypes
that can be identified and used to categorize people's behaviors.
Archetypes are universal structures of the collective unconscious that
refer to the inherent way people are predisposed to perceive and process
information. The main archetypes that Jung studied were the persona (how people choose to present themselves to the world), the anima and animus
(part of people experiencing the world in viewing the opposite sex,
that guides how they select their romantic partner), and the shadow
(dark side of personalities because people have a concept of evil;
well-adjusted people must integrate both good and bad parts of
themselves). Jung looked at the role of the mother
and deduced that all people have mothers and see their mothers in a
similar way; they offer nurture and comfort. His studies also suggest
that "infants have evolved to suck milk from the breast, it is also the
case that all children have inborn tendencies to react in certain ways."
This way of looking at the mother is an emic way of applying a concept
cross-culturally and universally.
Importance as regards personality
Emic
and etic approaches are important to understanding personality because
problems can arise "when concepts, measures, and methods are carelessly
transferred to other cultures in attempts to make cross-cultural
generalizations about personality." It is hard to apply certain
generalizations of behavior to people who are so diverse and culturally
different. One example of this is the F-scale (Macleod). The F-scale, which was created by Theodor Adorno, is used to measure authoritarian personality, which can, in turn, be used to predict prejudiced behaviors. This test, when applied to Americans, accurately depicts prejudices towards black individuals. However, when a study was conducted in South Africa using the F-Scale (Pettigrew and Friedman), results did not predict any prejudices towards black individuals. This
study used emic approaches of study by conducting interviews with the
locals and etic approaches by giving participants generalized
personality tests.
Schrödinger's cat: a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source connected to a Geiger counter are placed in a sealed box. As illustrated, the quantum description uses a superposition of an alive cat and one that has died.
In quantum mechanics, Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment concerning quantum superposition. In the thought experiment, a hypothetical cat
in a closed box may be considered to be simultaneously both alive and
dead while it is unobserved, as a result of its fate being linked to a
random subatomic event that may or may not occur. This experiment, viewed this way, is described as a paradox. This thought experiment was devised by physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935 in a discussion with Albert Einstein to illustrate what Schrödinger saw as the problems of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
In Schrödinger's original formulation, a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal radiation monitor such as a Geiger counter
detects radioactivity (a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered,
releasing the poison, which kills the cat. If no decaying atom triggers
the monitor, the cat remains alive. The Copenhagen interpretation
implies that the cat is therefore simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality resolves into one possibility or the other.
Although originally a critique on the Copenhagen interpretation,
Schrödinger's seemingly paradoxical thought experiment became part of
the foundation of quantum mechanics. It is often featured in theoretical
discussions of the interpretations of quantum mechanics, particularly in situations involving the measurement problem. As a result, Schrödinger's cat has had enduring appeal in popular culture.
The experiment is not intended to be actually performed on a cat, but
rather as an easily understandable illustration of the behavior of
atoms. Experiments at the atomic scale have been carried out, showing
that very small objects may exist as superpositions, but superposing an
object as large as a cat would pose considerable technical difficulties.
Fundamentally, the Schrödinger's cat experiment asks how long quantum superpositions last and when (or whether) they collapse. Different interpretations of the mathematics of quantum mechanics have been proposed that give different explanations for this process.
Origin and motivation
Unsolved problem in physics
How does the quantum description of reality,
which includes elements such as the superposition of states and
wavefunction collapse or quantum decoherence, give rise to the reality
we perceive? Another way of stating this question regards the
measurement problem: What constitutes a "measurement" that apparently
causes the wave function to collapse into a definite state?
Schrödinger intended his thought experiment as a discussion of the EPR article—named after its authors Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen—in 1935. The EPR article highlighted the counterintuitive nature of quantum superpositions, in which a quantum system for two particles does not separate
even when the particles are detected far from their last point of
contact. The EPR paper concludes with a claim that this lack of
separability meant that quantum mechanics as a theory of reality was
incomplete.
Schrödinger and Einstein exchanged letters about Einstein's EPR article, in the course of which Einstein pointed out that the state of an unstable keg of gunpowder will, after a while, contain a superposition of both exploded and unexploded states.
To further illustrate, Schrödinger described how one could, in
principle, create a superposition in a large-scale system by making it
dependent on a quantum particle that was in a superposition. He
proposed a scenario with a cat in a closed steel chamber, wherein the
cat's life or death depended on the state of a radioactive
atom, whether it had decayed and emitted radiation or not. According to
Schrödinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead
until the state has been observed. Schrödinger did not wish to promote
the idea of dead-and-live cats as a serious possibility; on the
contrary, he intended the example to illustrate the absurdity of the
existing view of quantum mechanics, thus employing reductio ad absurdum.
Since Schrödinger's time, various interpretations of the mathematics of quantum mechanics have been advanced by physicists, some of which regard the "alive and dead" cat superposition as quite real, others do not. Intended as a critique of the Copenhagen interpretation (the prevailing
orthodoxy in 1935), the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment remains a touchstone for modern interpretations of quantum mechanics and can be used to illustrate and compare their strengths and weaknesses.
Thought experiment
A life-size cat figure in the garden of Huttenstrasse 9, Zurich, where Erwin Schrödinger lived from 1921 to 1926. Depending on the light conditions, the figure appears to be either a live cat or a dead one.
Schrödinger wrote:
One can contrive even completely burlesque [farcical] cases. A cat is
put in a steel chamber along with the following infernal device (which
must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter,
there is a tiny amount of radioactive substance, so tiny that in the
course of an hour one of the atoms will perhaps decay, but also, with
equal probability, that none of them will; if it does happen, the
counter tube will discharge and through a relay release a hammer that
will shatter a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would tell oneself that the cat is still alive if no atom has decayed in the meantime. Even a single atomic decay would have poisoned it. The psi-function
of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and
dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or spread out in equal parts.
It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted
to the atomic domain turns into a sensually observable [macroscopic]
indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. This
prevents us from so naïvely accepting a "blurred model" as
representative of reality. Per se, it would not embody anything unclear
or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus
photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.
Schrödinger developed his famous thought experiment
in correspondence with Einstein. He suggested this 'quite ridiculous
case' to illustrate his conclusion that the wave function cannot
represent reality.
The wave function description of the complete cat system implies that the reality of the cat mixes the living and dead cat.
Einstein was impressed by the ability of the thought experiment to
highlight these issues. In a letter to Schrödinger dated 1950, he wrote:
You are the only contemporary physicist, besides Laue,
who sees that one cannot get around the assumption of reality, if only
one is honest. Most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game
they are playing with reality—reality as something independent of what
is experimentally established. Their interpretation is, however, refuted
most elegantly by your system of radioactive atom + amplifier + charge
of gun powder + cat in a box, in which the psi-function of the system
contains both the cat alive and blown to bits. Nobody really doubts that
the presence or absence of the cat is something independent of the act
of observation.
Note that the charge of gunpowder is not mentioned in Schrödinger's
setup, which uses a Geiger counter as an amplifier and hydrocyanic
poison instead of gunpowder. The gunpowder had been mentioned in
Einstein's original suggestion to Schrödinger 15 years before, and
Einstein carried it forward to the present discussion.
Analysis
In modern terms Schrödinger's hypothetical cat experiment describes the measurement problem: quantum theory describes the cat system as a combination of two possible outcomes but only one outcome is ever observed.
The experiment poses the question, "when does a quantum system
stop existing as a superposition of states and become one or the other?"
(More technically, when does the actual quantum state stop being a
non-trivial linear combination
of states, each of which resembles different classical states, and
instead begin to have a unique classical description?) Standard
microscopic quantum mechanics describes multiple possible outcomes of
experiments but only one outcome is observed. The thought experiment
illustrates this apparent paradox. Our intuition says that the cat
cannot be in more than one state simultaneously—yet the quantum
mechanical description of the thought experiment requires such a
condition.
Interpretations
Since Schrödinger's time, other interpretations of quantum mechanics
have been proposed that give different answers to the questions posed by
Schrödinger's cat of how long superpositions last and when (or whether) they collapse.
A commonly held interpretation of quantum mechanics is the Copenhagen interpretation. In the Copenhagen interpretation, a measurement results in only one
state of a superposition. This thought experiment makes apparent the
fact that this interpretation simply provides no explanation for the
state of the cat while the box is closed. The wavefunction description
of the system consists of a superposition of the states "decayed
nucleus/dead cat" and "undecayed nucleus/living cat". Only when the box
is opened and observed can we make a statement about the cat.
In 1932, John von Neumann described in his book Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics
a pattern where the radioactive source is observed by a device, which
itself is observed by another device and so on. It makes no difference
in the predictions of quantum theory where along this chain of causal
effects the superposition collapses. This potentially infinite chain could be broken if the last device is
replaced by a conscious observer. This solved the problem because it was
claimed that an individual's consciousness cannot be multiple. Eugene Wigner asserted that an observer is necessary for a collapse to
one or the other (e.g., either a live cat or a dead cat) of the terms on
the right-hand side of a wave function. Wigner discussed the interpretation in a thought experiment known as Wigner's friend.
Wigner supposed that a friend opened the box and observed the cat
without telling anyone. From Wigner's conscious perspective, the friend
is now part of the wave function and has seen a live cat and seen a
dead cat. To a third person's conscious perspective, Wigner himself
becomes part of the wave function once Wigner learns the outcome from
the friend. This could be extended indefinitely.
A resolution of the paradox is that the triggering of the Geiger
counter counts as a measurement of the state of the radioactive
substance. Because a measurement has already occurred deciding the state
of the cat, the subsequent observation by a human records only what has
already occurred. Analysis of an actual experiment by Roger Carpenter
and A. J. Anderson found that measurement alone (for example by a
Geiger counter) is sufficient to collapse a quantum wave function before
any human knows of the result. The apparatus indicates one of two colors depending on the outcome. The
human observer sees which color is indicated, but they don't
consciously know which outcome the color represents. A second human, the
one who set up the apparatus, is told of the color and becomes
conscious of the outcome, and the box is opened to check if the outcome
matches. However, it is disputed whether merely observing the color counts as a conscious observation of the outcome.
Bohr's interpretation
Analysis of the work of Niels Bohr,
one of the main scientists associated with the Copenhagen
interpretation, suggests he viewed the state of the cat before the box
is opened as indeterminate. The superposition itself had no physical
meaning to Bohr: Schrödinger's cat would be either dead or alive long
before the box is opened but the cat and box form a inseparable
combination. Bohr saw no role for a human observer.
Bohr emphasized the classical nature of measurement results.
An "irreversible" or effectively irreversible process imparts the classical behavior of "observation" or "measurement".
The
quantum-mechanical "Schrödinger's cat" paradox according to the
many-worlds interpretation. In this interpretation, every event is a
branch point. The cat is both alive and dead—regardless of whether the
box is opened—but the "alive" and "dead" cats are in different branches
of the universe that are equally real but cannot interact with each
other.
In 1957, Hugh Everett
formulated the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which
does not single out observation as a special process. In the many-worlds
interpretation, both alive and dead states of the cat persist after the
box is opened, but are decoherent
from each other. In other words, when the box is opened, the observer
and the possibly-dead cat split into an observer looking at a box with a
dead cat and an observer looking at a box with a live cat. But since
the dead and alive states are decoherent, there is no communication or
interaction between them.
When opening the box, the observer becomes entangled with the
cat, so "observer states" corresponding to the cat's being alive and
dead are formed; each observer state is entangled,
or linked, with the cat so that the observation of the cat's state and
the cat's state correspond with each other. Quantum decoherence ensures
that the different outcomes have no interaction with each other.
Decoherence is generally considered to prevent simultaneous observation
of multiple states.
A variant of the Schrödinger's cat experiment, known as the quantum suicide machine, has been proposed by cosmologist Max Tegmark.
It examines the Schrödinger's cat experiment from the point of view of
the cat, and argues that by using this approach, one may be able to
distinguish between the Copenhagen interpretation and many-worlds.
Ensemble interpretation
The ensemble interpretation
states that superpositions are nothing but subensembles of a larger
statistical ensemble. The state vector would not apply to individual cat
experiments, but only to the statistics of many similarly prepared cat
experiments. Proponents of this interpretation state that this makes the
Schrödinger's cat paradox a trivial matter, or a non-issue.
This interpretation serves to discard the idea that a single physical system in quantum mechanics has a mathematical description that corresponds to it in any way.
The relational interpretation
makes no fundamental distinction between the human experimenter, the
cat, and the apparatus or between animate and inanimate systems; all are
quantum systems governed by the same rules of wavefunction evolution,
and all may be considered "observers". But the relational
interpretation allows that different observers can give different
accounts of the same series of events, depending on the information they
have about the system. The cat can be considered an observer of the apparatus; meanwhile, the
experimenter can be considered another observer of the system in the box
(the cat plus the apparatus). Before the box is opened, the cat, by
nature of its being alive or dead, has information about the state of
the apparatus (the atom has either decayed or not decayed); but the
experimenter does not have information about the state of the box
contents. In this way, the two observers simultaneously have different
accounts of the situation: To the cat, the wavefunction of the apparatus
has appeared to "collapse"; to the experimenter, the contents of the
box appear to be in superposition. Not until the box is opened, and both
observers have the same information about what happened, do both system
states appear to "collapse" into the same definite result, a cat that
is either alive or dead.
Transactional interpretation
In the transactional interpretation
the apparatus emits an advanced wave backward in time, which combined
with the wave that the source emits forward in time, forms a standing
wave. The waves are seen as physically real, and the apparatus is
considered an "observer". In the transactional interpretation, the
collapse of the wavefunction is "atemporal" and occurs along the whole
transaction between the source and the apparatus. The cat is never in
superposition. Rather the cat is only in one state at any particular
time, regardless of when the human experimenter looks in the box. The
transactional interpretation resolves this quantum paradox.
Objective collapse theories
According to objective collapse theories,
superpositions are destroyed spontaneously (irrespective of external
observation) when some objective physical threshold (of time, mass,
temperature, irreversibility,
etc.) is reached. Thus, the cat would be expected to have settled into a
definite state long before the box is opened. This could loosely be
phrased as "the cat observes itself" or "the environment observes the
cat".
Objective collapse theories require a modification of standard
quantum mechanics to allow superpositions to be destroyed by the process
of time evolution. These theories could ideally be tested by creating mesoscopic
superposition states in the experiment. For instance, energy cat states
has been proposed as a precise detector of the quantum gravity related
energy decoherence models.
Applications and tests
The experiment as described is a purely theoretical one, and the
machine proposed is not known to have been constructed. However,
successful experiments involving similar principles, e.g. superpositions
of relatively large (by the standards of quantum physics) objects have been performed. These experiments do not show that a cat-sized object can be superposed, but the known upper limit on "cat states" has been pushed upwards by them. In many cases the state is short-lived, even when cooled to near absolute zero.
A "cat state" has been achieved with photons.
A beryllium ion has been trapped in a superposed state.
An experiment involving a superconducting quantum interference device
("SQUID") has been linked to the theme of the thought experiment: "The
superposition state does not correspond to a billion electrons flowing
one way and a billion others flowing the other way. Superconducting
electrons move en masse. All the superconducting electrons in the SQUID
flow both ways around the loop at once when they are in the
Schrödinger's cat state."
A piezoelectric
"tuning fork" has been constructed, which can be placed into a
superposition of vibrating and non vibrating states. The resonator
comprises about 10 trillion atoms.
An experiment involving a flu virus has been proposed.
An experiment involving a bacterium and an electromechanical oscillator has been proposed.
In quantum computing the phrase "cat state" sometimes refers to the GHZ state, wherein several qubits are in an equal superposition of all being 0 and all being 1; e.g.,
According to at least one proposal, it may be possible to determine the state of the cat before observing it.
Extensions
In August 2020, physicists presented studies involving interpretations of quantum mechanics that are related to the Schrödinger's cat and Wigner's friend paradoxes, resulting in conclusions that challenge seemingly established assumptions about reality.
Some or all sexual acts between men, and less frequently between women, have been classified as a criminal offense
in various regions. Most of the time, such laws are unenforced with
regard to consensual same-sex conduct, but they nevertheless contribute
to police harassment, stigmatization, and violence against homosexual
and bisexual people. Other effects include exacerbation of the HIV epidemic due to the criminalization of men who have sex with men, discouraging them from seeking preventative care or treatment for HIV infection.
The criminalization of homosexuality is often justified by the scientifically discredited idea that homosexuality can be acquired or by public revulsion towards homosexuality, in many cases founded on the condemnation of homosexuality by the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Arguments against the criminalization of homosexuality began to be expressed during the Enlightenment.
Initial objections included the practical difficulty of enforcement,
excessive state intrusion into private life, and the belief that
criminalization was not an effective way of reducing the incidence of
homosexuality. Later objections included the argument that homosexuality
should be considered a disease rather than a crime, that
criminalization violates the human rights of homosexuals, and that homosexuality is not morally wrong.
In many countries, criminalization of homosexuality is based on legal codes inherited from the British Empire. The French colonial empire did not lead to criminalization of homosexuality, as this was abolished in France during the French Revolution
in order to remove religious influence from the criminal law. In other
countries, the criminalization of homosexuality is based on sharia law. In the Western world, a major wave of decriminalization
started after World War II. It diffused globally and peaked in the
1990s. In recent years, many African countries have increased
enforcement of anti-homosexual laws due to politicization and a mistaken
belief that homosexuality is a Western import. As of 2024, homosexuality is criminalized de jure in 61 UN member states and de facto in two others; at least seven of these have a death penalty for homosexuality.
History
Ancient through early modern world
The burning of the knight Richard Puller von Hohenburg with his servant before the walls of Zürich, for sodomy, 1482
The Assyrian Laws
contain a passage punishing homosexual relations, but it is disputed if
this refers to consensual relations or only non-consensual ones. The first known Roman law to mention same-sex relations was the Lex Scantinia.
Although the actual text of this law is lost, it likely prohibited free
Roman citizens from taking the passive role in same-sex acts. The Christianization of the Roman Empire made social attitudes increasingly disapproving of homosexuality. In the sixth century, Byzantine emperor Justinian introduced other laws against same-sex sexuality, referring to such acts as "contrary to nature". The Syro-Roman law book,
which was influential in the Middle Eastern legal tradition and
especially in Lebanon, prescribed the death penalty for homosexuality. Some Ottoman criminal codes called for fines for sodomy (liwat), but others did not mention the offense. In 15th-century central Mexico, homosexual acts between men could be punished by disembowelment and smothering in hot ashes.
During the late Middle Ages, many jurisdictions in Europe began to add prohibitions of sodomy to secular law. They also toughened enforcement, with vice squads appearing in some European cities. In some cases, sodomy was punished by investigation and denunciation,
in others by fines, and in some cases by the burning of the participants
or the location where the act had taken place. The death penalty for
sodomy was common in early modern Europe. It is unclear how strictly sodomy laws were enforced; one theory is that enforcement was related to moral panics in which homosexuals were a scapegoat. English monarch Henry VIII codified the prohibition of homosexuality in England into secular law with the Buggery Act 1533, an attempt to gain the high ground in the religious struggle of the English Reformation. This law, based on the religious prohibition in Leviticus, prescribed the death penalty for buggery (anal sex).
Many present-day jurisdictions criminalize homosexuality based on colonial criminal codes they adopted under British rule. The Indian Penal Code and its Section 377 criminalizing homosexuality were applied to several British colonies in Asia, Africa, and Oceania.The Wright Penal Code was drafted for Jamaica and ultimately adopted in Honduras, Tobago, St. Lucia, and the Gold Coast. The Stephen Code
was adopted in Canada (and in a modified form in New Zealand),
expanding the criminalization of homosexuality to cover any same-sex
activity. The Griffith Code was adopted in Australia and several other Commonwealth countries including Nauru, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Papua New Guinea, Zanzibar and Uganda, and in Israel. Once established, laws against homosexuality are often maintained by inertia and inclusion in postcolonial criminal codes. Some states adopted British-inspired laws criminalizing homosexuality on the basis of informal influence, while other former British colonies criminalize homosexuality under the influence of sharia law. Both China and Japan, which had not historically prosecuted homosexuality, criminalized it based on Western models in the nineteenth century.
During the French Revolution in 1791, the National Constituent Assembly
abolished the law against homosexuality as part of its adoption of a
new legal code without the influence of Christianity. Although the
assembly never discussed homosexuality, it has been legal in France
since then.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. Napoleon's conquests and the adoption of civil law
and penal codes on the French model led 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. Former French colonies are less likely than British ones to criminalize homosexuality.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 had already been decriminalized. However, some Ottoman men were executed for sodomy including two boys in Damascus in 1807.
The unification of Germany
reversed some of the gains of the Napoleonic conquests as the unified
country adopted the Prussian penal code in 1871, re-criminalizing
homosexuality in some areas. In Germany, the prohibition of homosexuality was not frequently enforced until 1933. In Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, an estimated 57,000 men were convicted of violating Paragraph 175. Never before or since have so many homosexuals been convicted in such a short period of time. Thousands of men were imprisoned and killed in Nazi concentration camps. West Germany convicted about the same number of men under the same law until 1969, when homosexuality was partially decriminalized.
In the Russian Empire, homosexuality was criminalized in 1835 and decriminalized in 1917 as a result of the Russian Revolution. The criminalization was reinstated in 1934, with a harsher penalty than before, for unknown reasons.
Post-World War II decriminalization trend
Proportion of the world population living in a country where homosexual acts are not criminalized, 1760–2020Number of jurisdictions criminalizing homosexuality, 1990–2024
In the decades after World War II, anti-homosexuality laws saw increased enforcement in Western Europe and the United States. During the 1950s and 1960s, there was a tendency to legalize homosexuality with a higher age of consent
than for heterosexual relationships; this model was recommended by
various international organizations to prevent young men from becoming
homosexual. Convergence occurred both through the partial decriminalization of
homosexuality, as in the United Kingdom (1967), Canada (1969), and West
Germany (1969), or through the partial criminalization of homosexuality,
such as in Belgium, where the first law against same-sex activity came
into effect in 1965.
There was a wave of decriminalization in the late twentieth
century; ninety percent of changes to these laws between 1945 and 2005
involved liberalization or abolition. Eighty percent of repeals between 1972 and 2002 were done by a legislature, and the remainder by the laws being ruled unconstitutional by a court. Decriminalization began in Europe and the Americas and spread globally in the 1980s. The pace of decriminalization reached a peak in the 1990s. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many former Soviet republics decriminalized homosexuality, but others in Central Asia retained these laws. China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997. Following a protracted legal battle, the Supreme Court of India ruled that the criminalization of homosexuality violated the Constitution of India in the 2018 Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India judgement.
One explanation for these legal changes is increased regard for human rights and autonomy of the individual and the effects of the 1960s sexual revolution. The trend in increased attention to individual rights in laws around
sexuality has been observed around the world, but progresses more slowly
in some regions, such as the Middle East. Studies have found that modernization, as measured by the Human Development Index or GDP per capita, and globalization (KOF Index of Globalization) was negatively correlated with the criminalization of homosexuality.
Africa is the only continent where decriminalization of homosexuality has not been widespread since the mid-twentieth century. In Africa, one of the primary narratives cited in favor of the criminalization of homosexuality is "defending ordre public, morality, culture, religion, and children from the assumed imperial gay agenda" associated with the Global North. Such claims ignore the fact that many indigenous African cultures
tolerated homosexuality, and historically the criminalization of
homosexuality derives from British colonialism. In the Middle East, homosexuality has been seen as a tool of Western domination for the same reason.
The application of international pressure to decriminalize
homosexuality has had mixed results in Africa. While it led to
liberalization in some countries, it also prompted public opinion to be
skeptical of these demands and encouraging countries to pass even more
restrictive laws in resistance to what is seen as neocolonial pressure. Politicians may also target homosexuality to distract from other issues. Following decolonization, several former British colonies expanded laws
that had only targeted men in order to include same-sex behavior by
women. Others, especially Muslim-majority countries in Africa, passed new laws to criminalize homosexual behavior. In many African countries, anti-homosexuality laws were little-enforced
for decades only to see increasing enforcement, politicization, and
calls for harsher penalties beginning in the mid-1990s. The rise of Evangelical Christianity and especially Pentecostalism
has increased the politicization of homosexuality as these churches
have been engaged in anti-homosexual mobilizations as a form of nation
building. While such calls often come from domestic religious institutions, the
influence of US conservative Christian groups, who have provided
networking, training and funding support, has been instrumental in
advancing anti-homosexual discourse in Africa.
As of 2020, 21 percent of the world population lives in countries where homosexuality is criminalized. In its 2023 Database, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) found that homosexuality is criminalized in 62 of 193 UN member states, while two UN member states, Iraq and Egypt, criminalize it de facto but not in legislation. In at least seven UN member states—Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria (only northern Nigeria), Saudi Arabia, Uganda, and Yemen—it is punishable by death. Two-thirds of countries that criminalize sexual activity between men also criminalize it between women. In 2007, five countries conducted executions as a penalty for homosexual acts. In 2020, the ILGA named Iran and Saudi Arabia as the only countries in
which executions for same-sex activity have reportedly taken place. In other countries, such as Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, and Libya, extrajudicial executions are carried out by militias such as Al-Shabaab, the Islamic State, or Al-Qaeda. In 2021, Téa Braun of the Human Dignity Trust estimated that more than 71 million LGBT people live in countries where homosexuality is criminalized.
Criminalized
Decriminalized 1791–1850
Decriminalized 1850–1945
Decriminalized 1946–1989
Decriminalized 1990–present
Unknown date of legalization
Never criminalized
Scope of laws
Laws against homosexuality make some or all sex acts between people of the same sex a crime. While some laws are specific about which acts are illegal, others use vague terminology such as "crimes against nature", "unnatural offenses", "indecency", or "immoral acts". Some laws exclusively criminalize anal sex while others include oral
sex or manual sex. Some sodomy laws explicitly target same-sex couples,
while others apply to sexual acts that might be performed by
heterosexual couples but are usually enforced against same-sex couples
only. It is more common for men who have sex with men to be criminalized than women who have sex with women, and there are no countries that only criminalize female same-sex activity. This has been due to a belief that eroticism between women is not
really sex and that it will not tempt women away from heterosexuality. Unlike other laws, which criminalized specific sexual acts, the British Labouchère Amendment in 1885 and the 1935 revision of Germany's Paragraph 175 simply criminalized any sexual act between two men. Both laws made it much easier to convict men for homosexuality, leading to an increase in convictions.
Penalties vary widely, from fines or short terms of imprisonment to the death penalty. Some laws target both partners in the sex act equally, while in other cases the punishment is unequal. While homosexuality is criminalized country-wide in many cases, in
other countries, specific jurisdictions pass their own criminal laws
against homosexuality, such as in Aceh province. Most laws criminalizing homosexuality are codified in statutory law, but in some countries such as Saudi Arabia they are based on the direct application of Islamic criminal jurisprudence.
Even in countries where there are no specific laws against
homosexuality, homosexuals may be disproportionately criminalized under
other laws, such as those targeting indecency, debauchery, prostitution,
pornography, homelessness, or HIV exposure. In some countries such as (historically) China and (currently) Egypt, such laws serve as de facto criminalization of homosexuality. One analysis of the United States found that, instead of being directly
arrested under sodomy laws, "most arrests of homosexuals came from solicitation, disorderly conduct, and loitering
laws, which were based on the assumption that homosexuals (unlike
heterosexuals), by definition, were people who engaged in illicit
activity". In 2014, Nigeria passed the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act 2013,
criminalizing people who have a same-sex marriage ceremony with five
years' imprisonment. Although homosexuality was already illegal, the law
led to increasing persecution of Nigerian homosexuals.
Enforcement
Laws
criminalizing homosexuality are inherently difficult to enforce,
because they concern acts done by consenting individuals in private. Enforcement varies from active persecution to non-enforcement; more often than not, laws are nearly unenforced for private, consensual sex. In some countries, there are no prosecutions for decades or there is a formal moratorium.
In Nazi Germany, the site of the most severe persecution of
homosexual men & women in history, only about 10% of the homosexual
male & female population was ever convicted and imprisoned. In Iran, the 2013 penal code forbids authorities from proactively
investigating same-sex acts unless kidnapping or assault are suspected. In some countries such as India (prior to 2018, when the sodomy law was declared unconstitutional) and Guyana, the laws are not commonly enforced but are used to harass LGBT people. Indian police have used the threat of prosecution to extort money or sexual favors. Arrests, even without conviction, can often lead to publicity causing the accused to lose their job. Those prosecuted under such laws tend to be disproportionately from
working-class backgrounds, unmarried, and between twenty and forty years
old.
States including Nazi Germany and Egypt commonly use torture to extract confessions from men suspected of being homosexual. In Egypt, possession of condoms or sexual lubricant or stereotypically feminine characteristics are cited as circumstantial evidence that the suspect has committed sodomy. Online dating apps have also been used to identify and target men for prosecution.
Physical examinations purporting to detect evidence of homosexual
practices have been employed since at least 1857, when the French
physician Auguste Ambroise Tardieu published a book claiming to identify several signs that a person had participated in receptive anal intercourse. As of 2018, at least nine states, including Tanzania, Egypt, and Tunisia, use medically discredited anal examinations in an effort to detect same-sex acts between men or transgender women. There is no evidence that such tests are effective at detecting whether the victim has taken part in homosexual activity. This practice is considered to constitute acts of torture under the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
Effects
The criminalization of homosexuality is often seen as defining all gays and lesbians as criminals or outlaws. Even when not enforced, such laws express a symbolic threat of state violence and reinforce stigma and discrimination. Homosexuals may fear prosecution and are put at risk of blackmail, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, police beatings, and involuntary medical interventions. The criminalization of homosexuality in some cases pushes LGBT culture
and socialization to the margins of society, exposing LGBT people to
crimes such as assault, robbery, rape, or murder from other citizens.
They may be afraid to report these crimes or may be ignored by the
authorities. Such issues lead to severe psychological harm. The laws also justify discrimination against homosexuals—being cited to deny child custody, registration of associations, and other civil rights—and prevent LGBT people from exercising their rights to freedom of expression and freedom of association.
Reactions of homosexuals to the laws range from internalizing stigma to losing respect for the laws and civic community in general. Historian Robert Beachy
argues that a confluence of factors including the criminalization of
homosexuality meant that a sense of homosexual identity was first
developed in Germany around 1900, ultimately catalyzing the first homosexual movement. LGBT movements often developed after the repeal of criminal laws, but in some cases they contributed to repeal efforts. LGBT activism against criminalization can take multiple forms, including directly advocating the repeal of the laws, strategic litigation in the judicial system in order to reduce enforceability, seeking external allies from outside the country, and capacity building within the community. A 1986 study found that the decriminalization of homosexuality in South Australia
did not lead to an increase in undesirable effects (such as child
abuse, public solicitation, or disease transmission) as claimed in
parliamentary debates.
The criminalization of homosexuality has been identified as an exacerbating feature of the HIV epidemic in Africa and Central Asia, because it dissuades many people at risk of HIV infection from
disclosing their sexual behavior to healthcare providers or seeking
preventative care, testing, or treatment. Criminalization both
reinforces societal disapproval of homosexuality, which is another
factor in decreasing the effectiveness of anti-HIV efforts and is
independently associated with less access to HIV services.
Support and opposition
Religions
The Abrahamic religions all have traditionally held negative attitudes towards homosexuality. The Hebrew Bible prescribes the death penalty for "lying with another man as with a woman" (Leviticus 20:13) but does not directly address lesbianism. It is disputed if the biblical prohibition was originally intended to prohibit temple prostitution
or particular sexual acts between multiple men, particularly those that
are seen as compromising a man's masculinity. The total prohibition of
homosexual behavior is considered to have evolved relatively late in the
Jewish tradition. Some Christians cite various Bible passages in order to justify the criminalization of homosexuality. Although the Holy See
officially opposes the criminalization of homosexuality, in 2014 Roman
Catholic bishops from Malawi, Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, Eritrea, Zambia,
Uganda, and Ethiopia united to demand criminal punishment of
homosexuals, calling homosexuality unnatural and un-African.
According to sharia law, liwat (anal intercourse) and sihaq or musahiqa (tribadism) are considered sins or criminal offenses. The SunniHanafi school, unlike other Islamic schools and branches,
rejects analogy as a principle of jurisprudence. Since there is no
explicit call for the punishment of homosexuals in the accepted
statements of Muhammed, Hanafi jurists classified homosexuality as a sin rather than a crime according to religious law and a tazir offense, meaning the punishment is left to the discretion of secular rulers. According to the Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali (Sunni), and Ja'afari (Shia) schools, any penetrative sex outside of marriage or between a man and his female slave is zina, a more serious crime. Zina is punishable by lashes or death by stoning; whether the death
penalty is allowed depends on the school, whether the man has been
married, and whether he is the active or passive partner. However, the
death penalty can only be applied upon a confession repeated four times
by the accused or testimony by four witnesses. All Sunni schools, but not the Shia Ja'afari, consider non-anal sex between men to be a tazir offense. In recent times, some progressive Muslims have argued for a new interpretation of liwat (which is never defined in the Quran) to mean something other than consensual homosexual acts.
Adherence to Islam is a major predictor of maintaining laws
criminalizing homosexuality and the death penalty for it. The majority
of studies have found no association for Christianity. 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. In Africa, anti-homosexual campaigns promoted by conservative
Christians, sometimes with support from U.S. conservative evangelical
Christian groups, have seen increased law enforcement efforts and the
introduction of harsher penalties against homosexual activity.
Under Buddhist religious law,
there is no punishment for homosexuality among laypeople. Although
harsh penalties are prescribed for penetrative sexual activity by male
monks, novitiates suffer less punishment than for heterosexual activity.
Arguments for
A prominent reason cited for criminalizing homosexuality is the claim, made without evidence, that it could be spread, and that laws against it would prevent homosexuals from recruiting children. This rationale was later proved wrong by scientific research showing that sexual orientation was fixed by a young age. Both Philo of Alexandria and Heinrich Himmler
believed that if allowed to spread unchecked, homosexuality would lead
to depopulation; therefore, they advocated harsh punishments. The belief that the West is conspiring to depopulate Africa using
homosexuality is also a common argument for retaining the
criminalization of homosexuality in Africa.
Supporters of paternalism argues that the state can interfere in citizens' private lives to secure a vision of the common good. A common argument is that criminalization of homosexuality is necessary to maintain public morality, traditional values, and cultural or social norms. Anxieties around public morality gained prominence in nineteenth-century Western Europe and North America. Before the medicalization of homosexuality
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was commonly seen as a
vice, similar to drunkenness, that occurred as a result of moral
degradation rather than being an innate predisposition. Soviet officials argued that homosexuality was a social danger that contravened socialist morality, and that criminalization was an essential tool to lower its prevalence. Some countries have cited the perception that the criminalization of homosexuality would prevent the transmission of sexually transmitted infections, in particular HIV/AIDS, as a reason to keep their laws.
Another reason cited in favor of criminalizing homosexuality is public opinion. The rarity of prosecutions is also cited as a reason not to repeal the laws.
Arguments against
Criticism of the criminalization of homosexuality began to be expressed by Enlightenment thinkers such as legal philosopher Cesare Beccaria in his 1764 treatise On Crimes and Punishments. Early opponents argued that the laws were impractical to enforce, ineffective at deterring homosexuality, and overly intrusive into private life. For example, Napoleon believed that "The scandal of legal proceedings would only tend to multiply" homosexual acts. In 1898, socialist politician August Bebel highlighted the disproportionate enforcement of Paragraph 175 against working-class German men as a reason for repeal. One argument leading to the decriminalization of homosexuality in countries such as Canada, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Bulgaria was that homosexuality was a pathological disease and therefore inappropriate as an object of criminal sanctions.
Another argument cited for the decriminalization of homosexuality
is that morality is distinct from law, which should concern itself only
with the public good. Based on the work of John Stuart Mill, the harm principle
posits that conduct should only be considered criminal if it harms
people other than those performing the action. According to this
principle, homosexuality should not be criminalized.The 1957 Wolfenden Report, which proposed the decriminalization of homosexuality in the United Kingdom, sparked a famous debate between Lord Devlin, H. L. A. Hart,
and others about whether the law was a suitable instrument for the
enforcement of morality when the interests of non-consenting parties are
not affected. Many of these justifications are consistent with a strong moral condemnation of homosexuality and are disputes over how best to handle the perceived social problem
of homosexuality, rather than being based on the inalienable rights of
LGBT people.
Another line of reasoning argues that homosexuality is not morally wrong. Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham wrote the first systematic defense of sexual freedom,
arguing that homosexuality and other forms of consensual sex were
morally acceptable as they were pleasurable to their participants and
forbidding these acts destroyed a great deal of human happiness. In the 1860s and 1870s, German Karl Heinrich Ulrichs was the most prominent critic of the criminalization of homosexuality. His demand for equality before the law and in religion on the basis of
an innate, biologically based sexual drive—beginning with the
decriminalization of homosexuality and ending with same-sex marriage—are similar to those sought by LGBT rights organizations in the twenty-first century. As a result of social changes, in the twenty-first century, the
majority of people in many Western countries view homosexuality as
morally acceptable or not a moral issue.
According to a 2017 worldwide survey by ILGA,
the criminalization of homosexuality is correlated with more negative
opinions on LGBT people and LGBT rights. Overall, 28.5 percent of those
surveyed supported the criminalization of homosexuality, while 49
percent disagreed. In states that criminalize homosexuality, 42 percent
agree, and 36 percent disagree, compared with non-criminalizing states
where 22 percent agree, and 55 percent disagree. Knowing someone who is
gay, lesbian, or bisexual is correlated with less support for
criminalization. The number of Americans who agree that homosexuality should be a
criminal offense has dropped from 56 percent in 1986 to 18 percent in
2021. Public opinion surveys show that while 78 percent of Africans
disapprove of homosexuality, only 45 percent support it being
criminalized.
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