sexual inequality
Last Thursday, three men were hanged in Iran for the crime of lavat, sexual intercourse between two men. The case is considered extreme even by Iranian standards, because while the death penalty is in place for homosexuality, it is usually enforced only when there is a charge of assault or rape alongside it; the accusations in these three cases were of consensual sex.
In Uganda, politicians have been seeking since 2009 to institute a strikingly nasty piece of legislation: the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality" (being homosexual more than once) and, in a totalitarian touch, penalties for teachers, doctors and even parents who suspected that someone in their care was gay but didn't report them. In Belize, there is a law on the statute books that criminalises homosexuality; a gay rights group in the country, Unibam, has brought a motion challenging the law, and had this reply from the minister of works, Anthony "Boots" Martinez: "My position is that God never placed anything on me for me to look at a man and jump on a man. I'll be clear on it … How would you decriminalise that, I am sorry, but that is law. Not only is the law made by man, that is a law made from the Bible. Why you think God made a man and a woman, man has what woman wants, and woman has what man wants, it's as simple as that. I'll fight tooth and nail to keep that law."
For lesbian and gay people who live in one of the 82 countries where homosexuality is criminalised, the world is not getting better: it is getting significantly, demonstrably worse. The irony – it's actually not an irony, it's a source of great shame, but it is also an unhappy coincidence – is that 40 of these countries are members of the Commonwealth, and this is a British export. Homosexuality was criminalised here in the 1880s, and was therefore part of our legislative package in the age of empire. By the time it was decriminalised in England and Wales in the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 (Scotland followed in 1980 and
In Uganda, politicians have been seeking since 2009 to institute a strikingly nasty piece of legislation: the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality" (being homosexual more than once) and, in a totalitarian touch, penalties for teachers, doctors and even parents who suspected that someone in their care was gay but didn't report them. In Belize, there is a law on the statute books that criminalises homosexuality; a gay rights group in the country, Unibam, has brought a motion challenging the law, and had this reply from the minister of works, Anthony "Boots" Martinez: "My position is that God never placed anything on me for me to look at a man and jump on a man. I'll be clear on it … How would you decriminalise that, I am sorry, but that is law. Not only is the law made by man, that is a law made from the Bible. Why you think God made a man and a woman, man has what woman wants, and woman has what man wants, it's as simple as that. I'll fight tooth and nail to keep that law."
For lesbian and gay people who live in one of the 82 countries where homosexuality is criminalised, the world is not getting better: it is getting significantly, demonstrably worse. The irony – it's actually not an irony, it's a source of great shame, but it is also an unhappy coincidence – is that 40 of these countries are members of the Commonwealth, and this is a British export. Homosexuality was criminalised here in the 1880s, and was therefore part of our legislative package in the age of empire. By the time it was decriminalised in England and Wales in the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 (Scotland followed in 1980 and