Senegal sees dramatic escalation in homophobic persecution

International pressure on Uganda as the country attempts to pass an anti-homosexuality bill is important, but other nations remain havens of anti-LGBT oppression. Cary Alan Johnson and Ryan Thoreson call for an end to the criminalisation of same-sex relationships that is fuelling homophobia in Senegal and elsewhere.

BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS
Authors: Cary Alan Johnson and Ryan Thoreson
The global outcry against Uganda’s ‘Anti-Homosexuality Bill’ could not be more deafening. Opponents of the legislation have condemned the effort not just to put gays in prison, which is already the law in Uganda, but to further criminalise the ‘promotion of homosexuality’, require that suspected gays and lesbians be turned in to authorities, and to punish some individuals – including those who are HIV positive or those euphemistically called ‘repeat offenders’ – with death.

The governments of Canada, France and Sweden have branded the bill wrongheaded. From Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to President Barack Obama himself, the US, a major foreign donor to Uganda, has made its disapproval of the legislation clear. Usually silent religious leaders, from Anglican and Catholic church leadership to Saddleback church’s Rick Warren and other evangelical Christians, have condemned the bill’s promotion of the death penalty, imprisonment for gays and lesbians, and the threat its provisions pose to pastoral confidentiality.

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