There was a culture in every society in the world that led to the criminalisation of gay people.
There is no justification for singling out Religion.

Hitler was no churchman, and he tried to exterminate all gays.

Not this from the Guardian,
"It's true that an awful lot of lobbying remained to be done (to change the law in the 60s). The HLRS got off the ground in 1958, following a letter to the Times signed by 30 of the great and the good, including former Prime Minister Clement Attlee, philosophers AJ Ayer and Isaiah Berlin, poets C Day Lewis and Stephen Spender, playwright JB Priestley and various bishops. (From our perspective of the early 21st century, when the churches seem so afraid of homosexuality, it's interesting that in this period they consistently and visibly backed reform.)"

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2007/jun/24/communities.gayrights