Kenyan President William Ruto and opposition leader Raila Odinga have united in their criticism of last week’s Supreme Court ruling allowing the LGBT community to register lobby groups in Kenya.
President Ruto has vowed that he will not allow gay marriage in Kenya, which he says is “against the country’s culture and religious beliefs”.
It is the latest and highest-profile attack on the punishment, which many have suggested is wrongly giving the LGBT community freedom to marry in Kenya.
Last Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that the decision of the Kenyan NGO board to deny the registration of the National Gays and Lesbians Human Rights Commission – or any other group with the words gays and lesbians, was unconstitutional.
The court said denying group registration based solely on sexuality was a violation of the constitutional right to association and freedom from discrimination.
But since then, there has been anger from the public, parliament, religious communities, powerful state officials including the chairman of the national assembly, and now the president himself.
On Wednesday the parliament discussed the sentence at length, and many members said they wondered why the court made a decision to grant freedom of association for what they described as illegal.
Kenya’s constitution only provides for marriage between members of the opposite sex, while the criminal law punishes sex “against the order of nature” with up to 14 years in prison.
This is a provision that Kenyan legislators have misunderstood.
On Thursday, Vice President Rigathi Gachagua said that registering a group that opposes the rights of gay people to marry is an attempt to legitimize LGBT actions in Kenya, which are against the country’s way of life.
President Ruto – to cheers from the crowd – suggested there is a campaign by foreigners to introduce “foreign practices” in the country, which he vowed not to allow in Kenya.
And opposition leader Mr Odinga has also been quoted as saying that it is not the judiciary’s role to make laws.
In recent weeks, there has been a rise in anti-gay sentiment in Kenya and the region, with hundreds of hostile social media posts undermining efforts to balance the discussion.
On the day of the sentencing, Kenyan legislator Peter Kaluma filed an official notice to amend the law to provide life imprisonment for those convicted of homosexuality or promoting it.
Source: BBC
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