This morning the BBC reports a judge in Malawi has imposed a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison with hard labour on a gay couple convicted of ‘gross indecency and unnatural acts’ See the link: BBC news report on Malawi gay couple prison sentence
Sad news, a depressing story with which to start my day here at Bellaugello Gay Guest House in Umbria.
It makes me mad to learn that two guys simply holding an engagement ceremony are condemned to such a horrific sentence – or to be brutally honest that they are sentenced AT ALL. As Gift Trapence of the Centre for the Development of People is reported as saying “How can they get 14 years simply for loving one another?” he asked. “Even if they are jailed for 20 years you can’t change their sexuality.”
and what annoys me the most is that these guys are being penalised for being open and honest about their love and sexuality, and the chances are as shown in many of the recent Catholic Church sex abuse scandals, he who doth protest loudest is far from being innocent, hypocrisy is everywhere, homosexuality is a fact of life, has been since time immemorial, and is not exclusive to powerless everyday men in the street, we have no choice in our sexuality.
I congratulate and admire Monjeza and Chimbalanga for their courage and conviction of their joint love and sincerely hope that goverments and agencies round the world suceed in quickly forcing the Malawian Government to overturn the brutal sentences and god forbid, but if they contemplate acting in such a manner again for officials of that country first to look closely at their sexualities… ‘he who is without sin cast the first stone’, if only people lived up to what they preached…….