December 23, 2019
Reports: African Nation Gabon Outlaws Gay Sex
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 2 MIN.
Sexual intimacy between consenting adults of the same gender was outlawed in the African nation Gabon last July, reports say, and now allegations have surfaced that the police there are using the law to create a cottage industry of taking bribes from gays they arrest, reports the news service Reuters.
The news means that the global count of nations that have outlawed gays enjoying sexual intimacy has ticked back up to 70 after that count briefly fell to 69 when Botswana jettisoned its own law banning sex between people of the same gender, noted UK newspaper the Independent.
The news reached the world outside of Gabon thanks to an advocate for LGBTQ rights who works with Interfaith Diversity Network of West Africa, an organization based in Ghana.
Davis Mac-Iyalla told the media he had gotten the story from two gay men who had been arrested in Gabon and were released after they paid off the policeman.
Mac-Iyalla spoke out against the new purported new law, saying, "It has further sent the LGBT community underground and has created harassment."
Added the advocate, "The corrupt police now use that, arrest people and then people have to bribe their way out."
Media accounts pointed to growing numbers of anti-gay Christian evangelicals in Africa and elsewhere for the way LGBTQ people are now facing crackdowns in the nation around the world, even as pockets of freedom persist.
Reuters quoted an ILGA World researcher named Lucas Ramon Mendos as saying, "Where things are getting better, there is a momentum for even more improvement, and where things are bad now we're seeing things are worsening."
Another researcher, Human Rights Watch's Neela Ghoshal, told the media that despite the news, the overall trend in Africa may be a hopeful one. Referencing anti-gay laws from a time when Britain ruled over colonies around the globe, Ghoshal noted, "It's unfortunate that a lot of African countries have claimed and owned those homophobic, colonial values," while also noting that "others haven't."
Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.
