Out in Africa: How should Africans respond to homosexuality
Homosexuality in Africa is a most controversial subject and in
recent weeks, the issue has fired up in the media and psyche of
Africans. Here’s one take on it.President Yahya Gammeh, has threatened to personally slit the throats of any man who wants to marry another man in Gambia,
Ironically, the personal threat
made against his gay countrymen in a public speech was supposed to be
about "fostering a healthy atmosphere" for Gambia's youth.
"If you do it [in the Gambia] I will slit your throat — if
you are a man and want to marry another man in this country and we catch
you, no one will ever set eyes on you again, and no white person can do
anything about it," said Jammeh, speaking in the Wolof language at
Farafenni, a market town near the Senegal border.
Jammeh's reference to "no white person" is likely a jab at
Western diplomats and governments, according to his former press
secretary, Fatu Camara. Camara now works as a journalist, after fleeing
the country to escape sedition charges.
But the president isn't the only Gambian official proudly showing his homophobic tendencies, Camara told Vice News.
Jammeh's foreign minister recently told a European Union gathering that
her boss would follow international law, but that the government would
"protect religious beliefs and traditions."
"If you read in between the lines, the foreign minister is
also trying to say, 'We are not going to accept homosexuality,' " Camara
explained to Vice News. "The president already made the Gambians believe that the reason the EU cut funding to him is because of homosexuality."
Jammeh, infamous for his frequent, violent, antigay public statements, signed a law that calls for lifelong prison sentences for acts of "aggravated homosexuality" last year. His roll call of homophobic vitriol includes a speech at the U.N. in which he said homosexuality was one of the three biggest threats to human existence, as well as a threat to kill LGBT asylum-seekers trying to flee the country
A comprehensive demographic study of more
than 200 countries finds that there are 2.18 billion Christians of all
ages around the world.* Many Africans consider themselves Christians –
in fact about one in every four Christians globally lives in sub-Saharan
Africa (24%).
In recent times however it’s not their good and gracious ministering
that has come to the fore but their divided attitudes towards the gay
and lesbian community across the continent.Ironically, the personal threat
made against his gay countrymen in a public speech was supposed to be
about "fostering a healthy atmosphere" for Gambia's youth."If you do it [in the Gambia] I will slit your throat — if you are a man and want to marry another man in this country and we catch you, no one will ever set eyes on you again, and no white person can do anything about it," said Jammeh, speaking in the Wolof language at Farafenni, a market town near the Senegal border.
Jammeh's reference to "no white person" is likely a jab at Western diplomats and governments, according to his former press secretary, Fatu Camara. Camara now works as a journalist, after fleeing the country to escape sedition charges.
But the president isn't the only Gambian official proudly showing his homophobic tendencies, Camara told Vice News. Jammeh's foreign minister recently told a European Union gathering that her boss would follow international law, but that the government would "protect religious beliefs and traditions."
"If you read in between the lines, the foreign minister is also trying to say, 'We are not going to accept homosexuality,' " Camara explained to Vice News. "The president already made the Gambians believe that the reason the EU cut funding to him is because of homosexuality."
Jammeh, infamous for his frequent, violent, antigay public statements, signed a law that calls for lifelong prison sentences for acts of "aggravated homosexuality" last year. His roll call of homophobic vitriol includes a speech at the U.N. in which he said homosexuality was one of the three biggest threats to human existence, as well as a threat to kill LGBT asylum-seekers trying to flee the country
A comprehensive demographic study of more than 200 countries finds that there are 2.18 billion Christians of all ages around the world.* Many Africans consider themselves Christians – in fact about one in every four Christians globally lives in sub-Saharan Africa (24%).
The storm was whipped up earlier in the year when on January 7 2014, dozens of Nigerians were arrested after the country passed a draconian anti-gay law that punishes homosexuality with a life sentence in prison. Global gay rights watchdogs claimed the bill was the work of U.S. Evangelicals.
Soon after, author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie took on the common arguments posed by supporters of the bill, speaking out against the laws that stated that being gay is “un-African”.
In her words – ‘The new law that criminalizes homosexuality is popular among Nigerians. But it shows a failure of our democracy, because the mark of a true democracy is not in the rule of its majority but in the protection of its minority – otherwise mob justice would be considered democratic.
Not long after, Binyavanga Wainaina, one of Africa’s leading literary figures, responded to the wave of recent anti-gay laws on the continent by publicly outing himself in a short story. He published ‘I Am a Homosexual, Mum’, to coincide with his 43rd birthday. Calling it the “lost chapter” of his 2011 memoir, it is a re-imagining of the last days of his mother’s life, in which he goes to her deathbed and tells her the truth about his sexuality.
On February 25, 2014 Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni outlawed homosexuality in his country. Museveni called homosexuals ‘mercenaries’ and signed one of the world’s toughest anti-gay laws raising the ire of gay and lesbian activists and supporters worldwide.
However, it really should not come as a great surprise for there’s apparently another agenda at work here. Despite the tutting of the West, and the efforts of Uganda’s small – and brave – gay rights community, the law has the backing of large numbers of Uganda’s conservative churchmen.
The president did not opt to quietly sign the bill over the weekend, while the world was distracted by the revolution in Ukraine. Instead, he wanted “the full witness of the international media to demonstrate Uganda’s independence in the face of Western pressure and provocation”.
In other words, this was no longer just about gay rights, in Mr Museveni’s view, but about the West lecturing an African country on how to run its internal affairs, in this case on a matter of sensitive sexual morality.
The next day, a Ugandan newspaper (if we can call it that, for its objectivity has long since been abandoned) listed 200 people it accused of being gay. “Exposed!’’ the headline of the Red Pepper tabloid read, beneath photographs of Ugandans it said were gay, as well as reporting on lurid stories of alleged homosexual actions. (If the idea was to humiliate and dehumanise the gay and lesbian community, then Uganda is doing a great job of it.)
The Republic of Mozambique has reason to be proud this week.
The Southeast African nation has officially decriminalized relationships between people of the same sex, reports the Washington Blade.
A law that went into effect Tuesday overturned a colonial-era law that forbade “vices against nature,” which many interpreted to include homosexuality.
Lawmakers approved the amendment to the 1886 law in December with support from the former president of Mozambique, Joaquim Chissano.
International LGBT activists applauded the amendment, including Ty Cobb, the global director for the Human Rights Campaign.
“LGBT advocates in Mozambique worked tirelessly with the broader civil society community to ensure that the reform of Mozambique’s criminal code would create a more equal Mozambique for all,” he said. “Their work serves as a model for success that inspires all of us.”
However, activists on the ground emphasized the work that still must be done to achieve LGBT equality.
Danilo da Silva, who helms Lambda, an LGBT group based in the country’s capital, called the penal code “absurd” and “outdated” in an interview with the Blade. He said it “reflected the bigotry and the morals of former colonial masters.”
However, he bemoaned the failure of the government to add specific protections against LGBT discrimination in the new law. He also expressed little optimism that the legislative move would have an impact on people in their everyday lives.
The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, or ILGA, lists 75 countries with criminal laws against sexual activity by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex people (LGBTIs), but that’s an understatement.
The death penalty can be imposed for same-sex intimacy in eight of them.
This blog’s similar 79-country list is below, including links to this blog’s coverage of each country.
The difference between the two lists is that ILGA mentions but does not include four political entities that are on this blog’s list:
- Indonesia, where two large provinces outlaw homosexual acts; and
- Three political entities that have anti-LGBT laws but that aren’t accepted as countries by the international community — the Cook Islands, a self-governing country whose residents all have citizenship in New Zealand; Gaza/Palestine; and the territory of Syria and Iraq that is controlled by Daesh/ISIS/ISIL troops.
Back in 2012, based on a separate, nearly complete count, St. Paul’s Foundation for International Reconciliation cited a total of 76 countries. That list was used in that year’s Spirit of 76 Worldwide program aimed at repealing those laws. It also inspired the name of this blog — “Erasing 76 Crimes.”
ILGA lists eight nations that provide for the death penalty for same-sex intimacy, “but only five (Mauritania, Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen) actually implement it. But a sixth State, Iraq, although not in the civil code clearly has judges and militias throughout the country that issue the death sentence for same-sex sexual behaviours. Further, some provinces in Nigeria and Somalia officially implement the death penalty. We are also aware that in the Daesh (ISIS/ISIL)-held areas the death penalty is implemented (although a non-State actor, we list it here). Brunei Darussalam is due to activate the death penalty for same sex sexual acts in 2016, but it seems likely that like Pakistan, Afghanistan and Qatar although it is on the statute, it will not be implemented.”
These are some of the recent changes in the list:
- The tiny nations of Palau in the western Pacific Ocean and São Tomé and PrÃncipe, in the Atlantic Ocean off the shores of central Africa, recently decriminalized homosexuality and were dropped from this list in 2014.
-
Mozambique, on the southeastern coast of Africa, with a population of 24 million, adopted a new Penal Code in the second half of 2014 and was dropped from this list in early 2015.
Mozambique’s LGBTI advocacy organization, Lambda, can celebrate the repeal of the country’s anti-gay law, but it has not yet won its battle for official government recognition, which it has been seeking since 2008. (Photo courtesy of Lambda) - Lesotho also was dropped from the list after adopting a new Penal Code, which apparently eliminated the nation’s former common-law crime of sodomy.
- Iraq was added to the list, although it does not have a civil law against same-sex relations. But in practice Iraq defers to Sharia judges who, as ILGA notes, “continue to order executions of men and women for same-sex sexual behaviour.”
- Chad was briefly added to the list — by mistake — because of a proposed new Penal Code that would provide for 15 to 20 years in prison and a fine of 50,000 to 500,000 CFA francs (US $86 to $860) “for anyone who has sex with persons of the same sex.” Chad was removed from the list after ILGA realized that the proposed change had been approved in 2014 by Chad’s cabinet, but not by the president.
- Daesh (or ISIS / ISIL) was added to the list because it publicizes its executions of LGBTI people in the the areas of northern Iraq and northern Syria held by its troops. ILGA states that “the Nusr [‘Victory’ in Arabic] website, which claims to be the website of the Islamic caliphate, has a section on Legal Jurisprudence (evidence-based rules and the penal code). One of the pages under this section is dedicated to “punishment for sodomy”, which states: “the religiously-sanctioned penalty for sodomy is death, whether it is consensual or not. Those who are proven to have committed sodomy, whether sodomizer or sodomized, should be killed…”.
Africa
1 Algeria
2 Angola
3 Botswana
4 Burundi
5 Cameroon
6 Comoros
7 Egypt
8 Eritrea
9 Ethiopia
10 Gambia 11 Ghana
12 Guinea
13 Kenya
14 Liberia
15 Libya
16 Malawi (enforcement of law suspended)
17 Mauritania
18 Mauritius
19 Morocco
20 Namibia
21 Nigeria
22 Senegal
23 Seychelles. Seychelles does not prosecute anyone under their anti-sodomy law, has promised to repeal it, but has not yet done so. A same-sex wedding was conducted in Seychelles on June 13, 2015, on British territory (the British high commissioner’s residence). Seychelles laws currently have no provision for marriage equality.
24 Sierra Leone
25 Somalia
26 South Sudan
27 Sudan
28 Swaziland
29 Tanzania
30 Togo
31 Tunisia
32 Uganda
33 Zambia
34 Zimbabwe
Asia, including the Middle East
35 Afghanistan
36 Bangladesh
37 Bhutan
38 Brunei
39 Daesh (or ISIS / ISIL)
40 India
41 Iran
42 Iraq
43 Kuwait
44 Lebanon (law ruled invalid in one court)
45 Malaysia
46 Maldives
47 Myanmar
48 Oman
49 Pakistan
50 Palestine/Gaza Strip
51 Qatar
52 Saudi Arabia
53 Singapore
54 Sri Lanka
55 Syria
56 Turkmenistan
57 United Arab Emirates
58 Uzbekistan
59 Yemen
Americas
60 Antigua & Barbuda
61 Barbados
62 Belize
63 Dominica (But see “Dominica leader: No enforcement of anti-gay law” )
64 Grenada
65 Guyana
66 Jamaica
67 St Kitts & Nevis
68 St Lucia
69 St Vincent & the Grenadines
70 Trinidad & Tobago
In the United States, anti-sodomy laws were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003, but they are still on the books in 13 states: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia. Conservative state legislators refuse to repeal the laws and, in some cases, police still enforce them. In the past several years more than a dozen LGBT people were arrested for violating those laws, but the arrestees were freed because prosecutors won’t seek convictions based on defunct laws.
Oceania
71 Cook Islands
72 Indonesia (Aceh Province and South Sumatra)
73 Kirbati
74 Nauru
75 Papua New Guinea
76 Samoa
77 Solomon Islands
78 Tonga
79 Tuvalu
Europe
No country in Europe has a law against homosexuality. The last European location with such a law was Northern Cyprus (recognized as a country only by Turkey), which repealed its law in January 2014.
Also in Europe and worth mentioning but not on that list of countries with laws against homosexuality are:
- Russia, which enacted an anti-gay propaganda law in 2013 prohibiting any positive mention of homosexuality in the presence of minors, including online;
- Lithuania, which has a similar law.
- Ukraine, which has considered, but so far has not adopted a similar law against “gay propaganda.”
- Moldova, which adopted and then repealed such a law in 2013.
Dencia is a Nigerian pop star who is becoming better known for her skin cream, Whitenicious. 
In
the early 1900s to the 1950s, African-Americans (who had by now
internalised white society’s preference for lighter skin), held ‘paper
bag parties’, pinning a brown paper bag to the front door; anyone whose
skin was darker than the bag was denied entry. This ‘test’ was even 
