When India’s Supreme Court this week legalized same-sex intercourse between consenting adults, it buried, most likely forever, a 157-year-old law introduced during British colonial rule. The decision was a landmark — not least because civil rights activists hope it will galvanize the repeal of similar anti-gay legislation that remains on the books in dozens of other former outposts of the British Empire. Britain decriminalized homosexuality beginning half a century ago, but the vestiges of its Victorian-era morality laws linger from Antigua to Zambia. About 35 members of the Commonwealth of Nations, made up mostly of former colonies, ban same-sex relations, accounting for roughly half the countries that outlaw gay intercourse.
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