African politicians often decry LGBTQ identity as a decadent Western import even though gay sex and even same-sex marriage were prevalent in many pre-colonial African tribes. Of Africa’s 54 countries, the bulk of them criminalize consensual same-sex sexual encounters, mostly thanks to British-era colonial laws and American evangelicals like Scott Lively who export their homophobia abroad. To uncover these countries where homosexuality is illegal, we used data from the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association 2017 report on State Sponsored Homophobia, the Kaleidoscope Trust’s 2015 report on LGBTQ Rights Across the Commonwealth and Louis-Georges Tin’s encyclopedic volume The Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience.Ĭountries where homosexuality is illegal: Algeria, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Comoros, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe In Nicaragua and Iraq, roving hate militias target queer people for beatings and execution in the streets. In Egypt, it’s for “debauchery.” China detains LGBTQ activists as anti-government dissidents. In Indonesia, they’re arrested as sex workers. In Russia‘s Chechen Republic, for example, gay men are often detained under trumped-up drug charges. Often those same countries persecute LGBTQ people under other laws. China, Russia, Egypt, Nicaragua, Iraq or Indonesia are all good examples: None of them have anti-sodomy laws, but all of them have police and extra-governmental forces that harass, detain and sometimes torture or kill LGBTQ people. It’s also important to point out that countries without anti-sodomy laws can still be intensely homophobic and violent against LGBTQ people.
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Unless otherwise stated, each nation’s prison sentence runs anywhere from one to eight years. In this handy guide of countries where homosexuality is illegal, we’ve only included countries with laws on the books that imprison adult men for consensual sex with another adult male - usually forbidden under the charges of sodomy, buggery, unnatural offenses or crimes against nature.