Gambia approves new anti-gay criminal code

[politicus]

Still a FF on balance for leaving the Commonwealth.

[politicus]

Bomb them.

You do realize that isn't the worst anti-gay law in existence, right?

If you know that, why did you make a separate thread about it? (instead of just posting it in the African News thread). There isn't that much to discuss other than people writing different versions of horrible and disgusting and Snowstalker trolling even more stupidly than usual. It's an anti-Western authoritarian regime in a 90% Muslim country, so you don't have the link to US Christian fundies to debate.

Jammeh needs scapegoats to keep up support/defuse discontent and gays are perfect for that. And there isn't much we can do about it, since they can easily find replacement markets in Asia for their export if we try sanctions. Their tourist industry is to a large degree dependent on female sex tourism, for which there will always be a market, so a consumer boycott is unrealistic.

[politicus]

I may have been a bit acerbic about this, but the point is that it doesn't make much sense to debate the horrible conditions of gays in countries where the human rights situation is abysmal for everybody. It is for example hardly surprising that people get executed for being gay in Mauritania, when the country tolerates actual slavery and a master can kill his slave unpunished.

This is the current situation in Africa and a lot of the countries where homosexuality is illegal are free or semi-free electoral democracies, where LGBT groups are organizing and fighting to get registered, so they can operate freely - recently with success in places like Kenya and Botswana - and are campaigning under very difficult circumstances . It gives a lot more meaning to focus on helping the local activists in countries where there is an actual chance of improvements, than being up in arms about a place like Gambia, where you need regime change for anything positive to happen.





green = free, yellow = semi-free, purple = non-free in the Freedom House definition.

[politicus]

Where is the likeliest place in Africa for homosexuality to be legalised? Intuition tells me that of those that are pink on your map, Senegal, Botswana, Namibia might be good candidates, but that is based on nothing very substantial

Mauritius, where homosexuality isn't actually illegal per se, but sodomy is would be number one. Apart from that the Seychelles where it is legal for women and they even have a couple of anti-discrimination laws (employment, ban on hate speech), but it is illegal for men - it has been proposed in their parliament.

On the mainland probably one of the other countries where the ban is a legal relict from colonial times. Of those, there are three where it is both legal for women and rarely enforced for men: Sierra Leone, Botswana, Namibia, but some prominent Sierra Leone politicians are against legalization.

Botswana and Namibia are very influenced by South Africa and Namibian gay couples can get married in SA and get it recognized in Namibia (despite homosexuality being illegal..). SWAPO is in total control and maybe they will at some point say its stupid to have it on the books. If the opposition ever wins in Botswana they would do it. They have a ban on employment discrimination of gays.

Senegal is Muslim and well-organized, so I  don't see it happening there anytime soon. The only Muslim countries where it is legal are the ones where the state is too weak to regulate much anyway.

[politicus]

LOL@that map. Quite special.... and revealing.

Yeah, one obvious thing is that British colonies all had bans on homosexuality whereas French and Belgian didn't.

So lots of ex French/Belgian colonies where homosexuality is so alien a concept that no one has thought of banning it and/or with a very low level of government capacity to regulate things.