African LGBT Groups Call For End To Anti-Gay Laws

By 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff

Representatives from LGBT groups throughout Africa are calling for governments to end homophobia and repeal laws against homosexuality.

The conference, in the Mozambique capital, was organized by the Coalition of African Lesbians. About 75 people are taking part in the week long meeting.

Homosexuality is outlawed in 38 countries in Africa.

''We might be seemingly a bit lost right now on the African continent, but there's positive talk,'' one delegate who declined to give her name or country told the British Broadcasting Corporation. ''As Christians we realize that the Bible doesn't discriminate, it embraces us in our diversity.''

''I'm finding myself as an individual who is every day trying to get the people that I identify with... everyday having to educate them about who I am, but finding it difficult for them to open their minds and their hearts,'' another delegate, Nahlahla Mukize, told the BBC.

''I haven't found myself being attacked or kicked out of home but it's just the discourse, how people talk about lesbian issues or how our government... how they tend to sideline people like myself.''

Two of the worst countries for gays and lesbians are Zimbabwe and Senegal.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has a long history of attacking gays.

In 2006 Mugabe told the cheering throng that same sex marriage is a threat to mankind and condemned churches that bless gay unions.

He said his government would jail and clergy who performed a blessing ceremony for gay couples in Zimbabwe. (story)

A month later he accused British gay rights leader Peter Tatchell of being behind an alleged coup plot. (story)

The government showed off a cache of arms on Zimbabwe television that is claimed had been seized at the home of one of the plotters.

Tatchell denied the allegations although he has been a constant critic of Mugabe's treatment of gays and other minorities.

On several occasions he has attempted citizen's arrests of the Zimbabwean strongman.

In 1999, he and other activists from the gay activist group OutRage! ambushed Mugabe's motorcade and attempted to seize him in a London street. In 2001, he swooped on the President as he was leaving the Hilton Hotel in Brussels. Tachell was beaten unconscious by Mugabe's bodyguards.

In 2004 a British court refused to issue an arrest warrant for the Zimbabwean leader.

Tatchell presented a 52 page brief that outlined a regime of brutality, homophobia, and repression of civil rights. It detailed accounts of political opponents being rounded up and imprisoned and quoted extensively from reports made by more than a half dozen international human rights groups and contains interviews with victims of the regime.

The judge ruled that Mugabe is immune from foreign arrest since he is a head of state.

In Senegal up to 20 men were arrested earlier this month following the publication in a widely popular Senegal gossip magazine of pictures purportedly of a gay wedding. All of those arrested allegedly were photographed at the ''wedding''.

It is believed the ceremony took place more than a year and a half ago and that the photographs were sold to Icones magazine recently. Reports suggest that the sensationalist publication paid about $3000 for them.

Courts have wide latitude in dealing with gay sexual acts. Penalties on the books range from death to lashings, to imprisonment.

South Africa has some of the world's most progressive gay rights legislation on the books, including same sex marriage. But the spokesperson for this week's conference said even there gays and lesbians face frequent discrimination.

Fikile Vilakazi said that gays and lesbians have been threatened, detained and arrested.