Developments on the project proposition.

Someone once said that tolerance of homosexuality was a side effect of modernization and the following examples would lend this statement some credence: England repealed anti-homosexual laws in 1967, France did the same in 1982, the unified Germany did so in 1994; and in the United States, 46 out of 50 states repealed anti-homosexual conduct laws and 36 repealed sodomy laws before the rest were invalidated by the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision Lawrence v. Texas. This isn't even the whole of it though; many nations which have retained such negative laws for a lengthy period of time, or even retain them today may in practice be societies that are not oppressive of homosexuality. While this is all true, I think it's definitely possible to look at this with a religious perspective. I will plan on looking at this by seeing which countries have the death penalty for homosexuals or those taking part in homosexual acts, those who give life sentences, and those who just give "large penalties". After some preliminary research, the final breakdown seemed to go along these lines: Those which still had the death penalty for homosexuality/homosexual conduct were Sudan, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, and Afghanistan. Life sentences are still handed out in Uganda, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Uganda is actually still up in the air about a specific homosexuality law but it has been decried by even some religious leaders. Much of Africa 'just' has large penalties for homosexuality: Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Lesotho, and Namibia are but a few. Syria, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are a couple others outside of Africa. With that I would like to tie in the religion aspect more closely: The religious breakdown of the countries with severe anti-homosexuality laws were as follows: 70% are Sunni Muslims in Sudan. Virtually all Mauritanians are Sunni Muslims. In Saudi Arabia, 100% of the population is supposed to be Muslim. There is a roughly 50-50 split in Yemen of Shi'a and Sunni Muslims. In Iran, 98% are Muslim with a vast majority of the Shi'a kind. Afghanistan on the other hand is 80% Sunni Muslim while 60% of the population in Sierra Leone is Muslim. Pakistan is also overwhelmingly Muslim with 95% of the population Muslim (75% of which are Sunni). Islam is also the religion of Bangladesh too. Bucking the trend is Uganda which is largely Christian with 42% identifying as Protestants and 41.9% as Catholic. With these statistics, since the majority of nations which react the most harsh to homosexuals have a majority, if not national, religion of Islam, I come to the conclusion that homosexuality is not tolerated at all in most Muslim countries while in "more Christian" countries, or nations with majorities of other faiths, homosexuality is often given some leeway. Thus, in this project I could see the study focusing on those countries, not so much on Christian nation-states, although comparisons could easily be made.