It was like that, if relatively mildly so, in rural Scotland in the 50s and 60s. Suspected homosexuals - I know of no case from my childhood of anyone who "came out" voluntarily - were called "Jessie Belles" (a designation which puzzled me until now, when a colleague pointed out that it must be the Scot-isation of "Jezebels"), and condemned to secrets and lies. Sexual encounters had to be negotiated in great secret, usually in dens of vice like Dundee. It was not until the seventies that the area got its first "out" gay man - who came to run a little museum which had been established to preserve the artefacts and history of the Scots fishing industry.

He was an object of suspicion and derision on the part of some men; but many of the women, who functioned as a kind of matriarchy, decided to accept him. My mother, who as the only village beautician had a sympathy for artifice, and as almost the only divorcee a sympathy with sexual dissidents, became friendly, and invited him home. There was a slow rise of a new awareness - that this particular prejudice could no longer be socially sustained. It was the local version of a victory for liberal values.

That harbinger of modernity is fiercely resisted in most other parts of the world. A trough between civilisations separates that part of the world which can accept homosexuality and that which does not. The realisation that it is uncivilised to discriminate, unworthy to snigger and inhuman to see a large part of one's fellows as intrinsically flawed is a realisation that is hard to come to, controversial, and often unpopular to enshrine in law and difficult to achieve. The acceptance of the curator was a large thing in that community. That some countries have achieved it, or are achieving it, replicates on a global scale the achievement of my village. Enshrining homosexual rights in law and in practice has been a world- shaking event. Extending them to men and women who live in fear and shame is an act of liberation.

Yet for one step forward, there is at least one step back. The Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, had vowed that gays would not march in his town, saying "Morality works here. If anyone has any deviations from normal principles in organising their sexual life, those deviations should not be exhibited for all to see."

In fact, in May a march of hardy men and women did go ahead. According to Tatchell, who was of course there, many of the marchers were beaten up by homophobic protesters, from whom they were very inadequately protected by the police.

In Poland, a recent European Union member state, the shutters also went up last week, if less firmly. In an inaugural address, Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said he wanted to keep his country's "culture and morals" separate from those he saw as degenerate in the west. "We differ," said Kaczynski. "There is no reason to hide this." Marriage, he said, was a union between a man and a woman and "we are going to protect this foundation of social life."

In rhetoric, this is not very different from that employed by President George W Bush, especially before the last election - though the reality of the US, which in some of its diverse states is the most liberal environment for any kind of sexuality in the world, differs greatly from Poland.

But Kaczynski, like Bush, depends on a rural, religious following as part of his core vote, and he must serve it. Christianity has never been "good" on homosexuality even now, Pope Benedict XVI tends to describe homosexuality as "an intrinsic moral evil" and "a grave depravity". Archbishop Akinola of Nigeria has enthusiastically championed a new law suppressing homosexuality in his country, and threatens to split the Anglican Church on the issue of gay ordination.

None of the monotheistic religions are "good" on it rabbis, especially in eastern Europe, are found to be as often on the side of those who call for bans as ministers and priests. Islam, now the worst, provides authority for homophobes in power to execute homosexuals - as happened a year ago in the Iranian town of Mashhad, when two teenage gay lovers were hanged on trumped up charges of rape.

This monotheistic tendency to homophobia may explain why the two most populous countries in the world - China and India - are, while far from welcoming, not vastly repressive. Their Taoist and Hindu traditions were liberal on the issue men could take male lovers, as long as they also produced children. The communists were the puritans.