Amnesty International has published a report: Making love a crime: Criminalization of same-sex conduct in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Thirty-eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa have laws criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct. Underpinning these laws are deeply entrenched discriminatory social attitudes. This report examines the effects of the criminalization laws on, and discriminatory social attitudes towards, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people. Amnesty International is urging governments to repeal laws criminalizing consensual same-sex conduct and to enact and enforce laws protecting LGBTI individuals from discrimination, harassment and violence, in accordance with their obligations under international law.
The full report is available as a PDF here.
There is also this press release: Rising levels of homophobia in sub-Saharan Africa are dangerous and must be tackled, says Amnesty in new report
Homophobic attacks and harassment across sub-Saharan Africa are reaching dangerous levels, Amnesty International warned in a new report out today.
Making Love a Crime: Criminalisation of same-sex conduct in sub-Saharan Africa looks at how “homosexual acts” are being increasingly criminalised across Africa as a number of governments seek to impose draconian penalties or broaden the scope of existing laws, including by introducing the death penalty.
Widney Brown, Amnesty International’s director of Law and Policy, said:
“These attacks – sometimes deadly – must be stopped. No one should be beaten or killed because of who they are attracted to or intimately involved with.
“In too many cases these attacks on individuals and groups are being fuelled by key politicians and religious leaders who should be using their position to fight discrimination and promote equality.”
Homosexuality, often characterised as “unnatural carnal acts” or “acts against the order of nature”, is currently a crime in 38 countries in Africa.
In the last five years South Sudan and Burundi have introduced new laws criminalising same-sex sexual conduct. Uganda, Liberia and Nigeria all currently have Bills seeking to increase existing penalties pending before Parliament.
The report reviews the current state of legal provisions across the continent and how these laws adversely affect LGBTI Africans. Individuals interviewed by Amnesty spoke of their daily struggle to survive discrimination and threats. The report contains specific cases from Uganda, Kenya, South Africa and Cameroon…
And there is this fact sheet.
This is just devastating. And the church, including ABC’s Rowan and Welby are on the horrific side of this. As are, sadly, extremely well funded US religious fundamentalists.
That’s the robust church quoted by “traditionalists?” The one the ABC’s must consider before sticking up for morality and human rights? I’ll stick with my island of compassion and decency in TEC.
Let’s not forget that women and girls in Africa are also subject to horrific inequality and persecution, and the church’s patriarchy is part of it.
Exactly, Cynthia.
As I’ve said, the churches there clearly deal in quantity, not quality. Welby and Williams are the most visible, but not the most vocal. You’ll find many of those, right here, telling us how tiny and insignificant TEC and liberal Christianity is, while their hands drip with blood. The sadly funny part is, the Africans think that all this is a sign of their “independence” from the West. They are as surely bought and paid for by white imperialists, as surely directed into the field as on any Southern plantation.
Evangelicals as well as Catholic and Anglican bishops have done marvelous work for the devil by portraying Christianity as a religion of hate. The blood of gays, burnt at the stake for centuries, and still subjected to a thousand forms of oppression due to Christian propaganda, cries out against this perversion of the gospel. The sin of Sodom, according to the OT, was oppression, injustice, inhospitality. Christian treatment of Jews and gays has been the most signal manifestation of this sin, a sin in which we are all still steeped.