The legacy of British colonial-era penal codes looms large in this history, informing many of these criminalising provisions. This timeline gives an overview of this history of the criminalisation of LGBT people, tracing in particular the evolution of the specific forms of criminalisation that originated in Europe and which are the source of many of the laws that still blight the lives of LGBT people across the world today. As the European powers expanded their control and influence over much of the world, they took their legal systems and the laws criminalising LGBT people with them, imposing them over diverse indigenous traditions where same-sex activity and gender diversity did not always carry the same social or religious taboo. Legal codes first implemented in Europe proliferated during the colonial period. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have faced legal proscription for hundreds of years, initially under religious laws, in particular those imposed by the Abrahamic faiths, and later under secular legal codes, often drawing heavily on the theological traditions that preceded them.
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