Kenya’s Republican Liberty Party wants to impose the death penalty for homosexuality and has put forward a bill that would see foreign gays and lesbians in the country stoned to death.
The party’s draft Anti-Homosexuality Bill would also see gay and lesbian Kenyans jailed for life and stoned to death in public for ‘aggravated homosexuality’ which the bill defines as sex with a person under 18, where the person has HIV or where the person is in a position of authority over the person they have had sex with.
The ‘aggravated’ category also includes same-sex activity with a person who has a disability or where the person is a ‘serial offender.’
The bill appears to be modeled on a similar law in Uganda that was recently struck down by its Constitutional Court and is now before the Kenyan Parliament’s Justice and Legal Affairs.
Particularly concerning is the imposition of the death penalty on non-citizens who engage in sex between people of the same sex as a large number of LGBTI Ugandans have fled to Kenya to escape the anti-gay climate in their homeland.
The Republican Liberty Party claims that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill is needed to combat external threats to the heterosexual family unit in Kenya.
‘There is need to protect children and youth who are vulnerable to sexual abuse and deviation as a result of cultural changes, uncensored information technology, parentless child developmental settings and increasing attempts by homosexuals to raise children in homosexual relationships through adoption, foster care or otherwise,’ the bill’s author Edward Onwong’a Nyakeriga claims.
Source: Gay Star News, Andrew Potts, August 11, 2014
