Prison for marriage

May 22, 2010

Long-term marriages sometimes resemble compulsory confinement, with partners feeling caged inside a prison with no chance to break out. This captivity is of course self-inflicted. In Malawi, however, marriage is an imprisonment from the very beginning. And not only figuratively: a gay couple who married last December, has now been sentenced to 14 years in prison with forced labor. The judge used the maximum penalty in order to "protect the public from people like you and we will not be tempted to imitate this terrible example." Sadly that the whole law of Malawi is ultimately an imitation. As the UN human rights commissioner Pillay explained, the legal basis for this verdict stems from the colonial period, a time typically characterized by intense Christian missionary activity. But in the meantime some major changes have taken place in the the former colonial powers. Lesbians and gays are allowed to marry in most Western states, but apparently it takes time and especially political pressure from the Western world in order to energize Malawi's government into enforcing a more tolerant treatment of homosexuals. Malawi draws 40 percent of its national budget from international development aid. That means that the queer community, as brave taxpayers, financially supports the Malawian legal system and ultimately this inhuman sentence. Therefore, we should lobby that in the future the payment of development aid will depend on the compliance with basic human rights! And who knows, maybe we can soon list some Malawian locations on queersome.

additional entries :

Kisses provoke beatings

Gay Pride in Bucharest and Bratislava

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