Why High Court Ruling on Gays Case Could Cause Repercussions

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There are issues when tabled, you can hardly decide on what to support. A case of lesbianism or gays can mostly be attributed to one’s ideologies and how they choose to view life. So, should we support what they do? Yet our country is ‘Christian dominated?’ A three-judge bench will deliver the ruling following petitions filled at Kenya’s High Court. They will decide on Friday whether to scrap colonial-era laws which criminalise homosexuality, in a ruling that could reverberate around Africa. Convictions under the decades-old laws are rare, but gay activists say the legislation which carries long jail terms for sexual acts deemed “against the order of nature” is unconstitutional and fuels homophobic persecution.

Kenya’s anti-gay legislation is reflected in more than half of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa where laws, often vague, punish same-sex contact or relationships. Activists believe the court has a chance to blaze a trail on a continent where homophobia is virulent in many communities. “These crimes are considered felonies… very, very violent dangerous crimes to society,” said Eric Gitari, the co-founder of the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Council (NGLHRC), one of the petitioners.

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And in September, a court ruled that “Rafiki” (friend), a film about a lesbian love affair which was the first Kenyan movie to be shown at the Cannes film festival, could be screened domestically for seven days after its initial banning. The court’s decision Friday could have repercussions for the rest of Africa, where several countries are facing challenges to similar legislation. Charles Kanjama, the lawyer for an association of Catholics, Protestants and Evangelicals fighting the decriminalisation, claimed the vast majority of Kenyans oppose “gay behaviour”.

“We believe very strongly that gay behaviour is a moral perversion, a sexual perversion. We believe it is behaviour which is harmful to the individual, to the family,” he told AFP. For Western minds, the question is why should you bother, if what I do doesn’t harm you. For us, we understand we are inter-connected people. He said the “bedroom is not an inviolable sanctum” and compared homosexuality to crimes such as bestiality, child rape, and incest.

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Even if the laws are scrapped, the West and humankind as a whole will eventually “realise they made a mistake” in embracing homosexuality, said Kanjama, comparing this to slavery or Hitler’s ideas of “racial superiority. It is not a question of whether with time our culture will change, it may, but it is a question of what is right.”

Kanjama said that no matter the outcome Friday: “I am confident that whichever side loses is likely to file an appeal.”

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