In Malawi, Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga are being held in custody and face criminal charges for having the temerity to celebrate their engagement to each other.It's a little unclear to me why this is being widely reported as a gay marriage when one news source quotes Chimbalanga as saying "I am a woman". But whether this is simply regular flavour homophobia (prosecuting two men for a relationship with each other) or a transphobia-homophobia double-whammy (wrongly gendering a trans woman as a man, and then prosecuting her and her male partner for engaging in a "gay" relationship with each other), it's completely unjustifiable. They should both be freed at once.
British campaigner Peter Tatchell comments:
"Malawi's anti-gay laws were not devised by Malawians. They were devised in London in the nineteenth century and imposed on the people of Malawi by the British colonisers and their army of occupation. Before the British came and conquered Malawi, there were no laws against homosexuality. These laws are a foreign imposition. They are not African laws," said Mr Tatchell.Sounds familiar.
Posts
