The issue is over here, although it may be easy to attribute homophobic attitudes to be external in origin, whether it was British colonization or Wahhabist-Salafist influence, it is much more complicated than that.

Obviously those 2 had it roles, and even profound roles, instituting homophobia into our laws and transmitted it downwards onto society.

The other issue is that the ruling class here themselves perpetuate it through self-orientalizing myths of Asian Values, through rigid notions of Malay identity having to be Muslim, through ideological discourses surrounding the ephemeral concepts of race.

All this adds up and the leads to the present day homophobia you find here. It’s a sad reality.

From what I know prior to colonial influence entirely, same-sex relations were recorded in the Malay Annals. It is assumed that no moralistic attributes were given to such people, which would make it the norm in general history, to be fair.

I’ve read some articles that LGBT perceptions in the early 80s and prior, to be morally neutral and sometimes marked with curiosity and friendliness -even by police. I haven’t looked deeply on gay people specifically, but I assume that a similar case is to be made, which makes sense considering that just up north in Thailand, as we both probably know, a country that was never directly colonized, is probably the most LGBT friendly country in SEA.