In Africa, 38 Countries Will Kill You or Imprison You

When it comes to discussing homosexuality and Africa, all eyes almost immediately turn toward Uganda. That country is currently debating anti-homosexuality legislation the likes of which makes Attila the Hun seem like the grandfather from those 1980s Werther's Original commercials. There's discussion about the death penalty, jail terms, and even imprisoning straight advocates of gay rights.

But Uganda is just the tip of the iceberg. All told, 38 countries in Africa have laws criminalizing homosexuality, some with the death penalty, and many more with harsh jail sentences. By far it's the continent with the worst laws on the books when it comes to homosexuality, a phenomenon which is in part rooted on bad colonial-era laws, as well as ... Robert Mugabe?

Well, at least according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), yes. The Zimbabwe relic, says HRW, stoked new levels of homophobia fifteen years ago that have reverberated around the entire continent since.

In recent weeks, in addition to Uganda, both Malawi and Senegal have seen LGBT folks arrested and imprisoned because of their sexual orientation. Add to that the fact that in Nigeria, Mauritania and Sudan, folks can be put to death simply for being gay (or perceived as gay), and you get quite the mess.

HRW calls laws criminalizing homosexuality in Africa "political manipulation." Their LGBT Program Director, Scott Long, points to Mugabe as just one example of this. Mugabe has called gays and lesbians "worse than dogs and pigs," campaign rhetoric used years ago to mobilize voters and distract them from a collapsing economy and failing social institutions.

"It was very successful in bringing together different groups," Long told the UK's Telegraph. Long adds that criminalizing homosexuality has also united certain religious groups in Nigeria, too.

Even in South Africa, which has the continent's only law recognizing marriage rights for same-sex couples, violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation is fairly common. Nowhere is that more visible than on the subject of "corrective rape," a phenomenon where people believe women and men can have the homosexuality raped out of them. It's barbaric. It's cruel. Yet it's a sign of respect within certain violent circles in South Africa, who celebrate perpetrators.

Given all of this, that's why voices like Douglas Foster are critical. In the LA Times, Foster writes that despite the widespread criminalization of homosexuality, and the role that religion plays in championing homophobia across the continent, activists are rising up to break the misnomer that one can't be gay AND African. Foster calls them part of a "burgeoning mass of women and men across the continent who reject the impossible, insulting, ahistorical, cruel and utterly false choice" that people have to choose between their sexual orientation and their geopolitical identity.

Today we're looking at 38 countries where folks can be killed or imprisoned because of their sexual orientation. But tomorrow? Well, maybe then we'll be looking at the folks behind SMUG (Sexual Minorities Uganda), Gay Uganda, Boy Interrupted, In The Now, and more, and watching them transition a continent from pervasive homophobia, to pervasive equality.

Photo credit: sarchi