Remembering the past

“Gays are worse than pigs and dogs,” Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is on record to have said. Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, who has described gays as “disgusting” people; and Yahyah Jammeh of The Gambia, who says gays are “mosquitoes” and “vermin”. They are homophobes.

Most African countries have a strong anti-gay cultural environment reinforced by stern anti-gay laws. Uganda and Nigeria passed separate anti-gay laws about a year ago, which prescribe harsh custodial sentences for gays. Homosexuals in Africa are targets of instant injustice. They are, either stoned to death, or burnt alive by marauding crowds with beastly abandon. Anything “un-African” must be intolerable to Africans, and must be purged by ‘any means necessary’ – even lynching.

Africa’s sexual minorities are fighting back. “Who defines what is un-African?” They are falling on ancient traditional practices documented by anthropologists, to counter what in their view, is a misinformed perception about homosexuality being alien to Africa.

A report titled: Expanded Criminalisation of Homosexuality in Uganda: A Flawed Narrative / Empirical Evidence and Strategic Alternatives From an African Perspective, prepared by Uganda’s sexual minorities, says anthropologists Stephen Murray and Will Roscoe, have clearly shown that homosexuality has been a “consistent and logical feature of African societies and belief systems,” throughout the Continent’s history. Other anthropologists like Thabo Msibi of the University of Kwazulu‐Natal, Marc Epprecht, E. Evans-Pritchard and Deborah P. Amory have reached similar conclusions.

The first documented case of homosexuality has been traced to Egypt (Africa) in 2400 BCE. Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, two male “overseers and manicurists of the Palace of the King” were depicted in a nose-kissing position in Egyptian art. In a 2000-year-old “explicit” San Bushman painting, which depicts men having anal sex with each other. Also, the Nzinga – a warrior woman in the Ndongo Kingdom of the Mbundu – who ruled as ‘‘King” rather than “Queen”, was documented by a Dutch military attaché, in the late 1640s, dressed as a man surrounded in her harem, by young men dressed as women she called “wives”. A clear manifestation of early transgenderism and transvestitism in Africa.

E. Evans-Pritchard also recorded that the Azande, or Zande of Northern Congo, practised an institutionalised traditional custom, which allowed older warriors to marry younger men, who were between 12 and 20 years old. They served them as “wives”. The warriors, according to anthropologists, paid a “brideprice” to the family of the young men they married, just as happens in heterosexual marriage contracts within the same traditional setting. The “boy-wives” served their “warrior-husbands” sexually, and domestically. Once married, the warrior-husband referred to his boy-wife’s parents as “gbiore” (father-in-law) and “negbiore” (mother-in-law). A precursor of gay marriage in Africa.

Eighteenth century anthropologist, Father J-B. Labat, is thought to have documented the Ganga-Ya-Chibanda, the presiding priest of the Giagues – a group within the Congo Kingdom, as routinely cross-dressing and being referred to as “grandmother”: another anthropological evidence of primordial transvestitism in Africa, it seems. And there’s a plethora of them.

The “Chibadi”, found in Southern Africa, were thought to have practised transvestitism. They were documented by a Jesuit in 1606, to have expressed aversion to, and embarrassment at, being called men.

Also, effeminate transvestites in 17th century Angola, were documented by Portuguese priests Gaspar Azevereduc, and Antonius Sequerius, to have been married by men. Such marriages were purportedly “honoured and even prized”.

Similarly, men who dressed and behaved as women in northwest Kenya and Uganda’s Iteso society had sexual relations with other men. Same-sex practices were also recorded among the Banyoro and the Langi, while in pre-colonial Benin, homosexuality was apparently seen as a natural phase for growing boys.

The Nandi and Kisii of Kenya, and parts of Eastern Africa, are also recorded to have practised female-to-female marriages, while, among the Cape Bantus, lesbianism was ascribed to women, who were in the process of becoming chief diviners, known as ‘isanuses’. Generally, in Southern Africa, many female diviners were thought to have been either homosexual, or asexual, because the divine healer is thought to be closer to women, and by extension, had spiritual proximity to nature’s fundamental source of sustenance.

Also, the rain queen of the Lobedu Kingdom in South Africa, Modjadji, is said to have taken up to 15 young wives as she saw fit. Anthropologists also claim gay sex amongst Bantu-speaking Pouhain farmers (Bene, Bulu, Fang, Jaunde, Mokuk, Mwele, Ntum and Pangwe), in present-day Gabon and Cameroon, was seen as mystical medicine for transmitting wealth. It was known as “bian nkû”ma”. Similarly, among the Nilotico Lango of Uganda, men who assumed “alternative gender status”, known traditionally as “mukodo”, could marry other men and be treated as women. Other Ugandan tribes such as the Bahima, Banyoro, and Buganda, have also been documented to practise same-sex relationship. Buganda Monarch, King Mwanga II, who was known as the Kabaka, is documented by anthropologists, to have had sex with his male subjects. Mwanga, apparently fought Christian missionaries, who attempted getting him to stop sodomising his male subjects. The Igbo of Nigeria; Nuer of Sudan; and the Kuria of Tanzania; also had homosexual practices in their cultures. Murray and Roscoe documented in their book, Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands that the Bafia people in Cameroon, saw homosexuality among young men as a normal resort to avoiding impregnating young girls during puberty. They found that boys had sex with boys as a precautionary measure for fear of impregnating girls before full maturity. Sexual affection between girls were also common in Lesotho.

Homosexuality is intricately interwoven into many African traditions, and, therefore, cannot be labeled as un-African. It predates colonialism. So, logically, the West can’t be deemed to have influenced a culture that pervaded before its forays into Africa. And besides, the West didn’t choose Africa’s tradition for the Continent. Africa is simply running away from its homosexual past.

http://www.starrfmonline.com/1.5326357

Africa comes out

Mozambique will officially rescind “vice against nature” legislation in a few weeks time.

Of the 76 countries that still criminalise same-sex relationships and behaviour, 38 are African. Recent surveys also show that the overwhelming majority of people who live in Africa strongly disapprove of homosexuality. This is even the case in South Africa, the only country on the continent that has legalised same-sex marriage.

Dozens of studies show that same-sex practices in pre-colonial Africa were not generally taboo in the way that colonial administrations codified them. Many traditional societies in Africa, and elsewhere, developed ways of ordering and tolerating same-sex attractions and behaviour. Many tolerated some same-sex relationships among men, particularly in age-related cohorts or military units. Large numbers of men practised some same-sex activities while asserting their heterosexuality in other spheres of life. Among women, many different African societies record marriage or other kinds of recognised relationships between women, as well as different forms of cross-dressing and role-swapping. These include societies and cultures in Kenya, Sudan, Cameroon, Nigeria, Lesotho, South Africa and many others.

Only during the height of colonisation were precise definitions of sexual orientations developed and proscribed behaviours punished. The British in particular brought in legislation because they thought “native” cultures did not punish “perverse” sex enough. Like so many other colonial era laws based on Victorian prejudices, these laws should have been repealed as part of the decolonisation process. But, on liberation, most English-speaking colonies did not repeal colonial-era “sodomy” or “crime/vice against nature” laws.

More recently, some of the impetus behind new laws has come from conservative and often racist organisations based in the US. In the last 15 years, the Christian right, primarily charismatic right-wing churches from the US, has been very active in driving anti-homosexuality sentiment in parts of Africa, like Uganda. These groups have supplied their African allies with discredited junk science to bolster what is ultimately a narrow, imported set of ultra-conservative values. Similarly, the growth of a more conservative set of Islamic customs in some parts of Africa has seen the erosion of indigenous belief systems that have been historically more tolerant of non-heterosexual orientations.

In Uganda President Yoweri Museveni signed a law that contained harsh new punishments for “homosexual acts” and for what it calls the “promotion” of homosexuality. Implementation of that law is currently suspended by the Ugandan Constitutional Court. There are also new laws in Nigeria, homophobic changes to the constitution in Zimbabwe and discussion about possible new laws in a number of countries, including Kenya. A particularly dangerous aspect of new laws in some parts of Africa is that they are designed to criminalise those who advocate for LGBTI rights or campaign for better access to public health facilities. This impedes the work of NGOs and activists and wider dissemination of new science about sexual orientation.

Same-sex attraction is neither “un-African” nor a colonial import. Between 350 million and 400 million people globally are not heterosexual, about 50 million of whom live in African countries. It is time to transform the continent’s laws. 

Defeat Homophobia

Homophobia is on the rise across much of Africa and remains illegal in many countries, including Kenya. In conservative Christian and Muslim countries in Africa, homophobia is a vote-winner. Kenya’s deputy president, William Ruto, has told worshippers at a church service in Nairobi that homosexuality had no place in the east African nation.  In Kenya a cross-party parliamentary group is seeking stricter application of existing anti-gay legislation

“We will not allow homosexuality in our society as it violates our religious and cultural beliefs,” Ruto was quoted as telling a cheering congregation at the Jesus Winner Ministry Church on the outskirts of the capital. “We will stand with religious leaders to defend our faith and our beliefs,” he said. “There’s no room for homosexuality in this country. That one I can assure you.” The Jesus Winner Ministry Church specialises in prophecies and describes itself on its website as “an oasis” for people “under the yoke of curses, witchcraft, stagnation, ancestral spirits and other evils brought by Satan.” It is popular with Kenya’s political elite.

Homosexuality is illegal in 36 out of 54 African countries and punishable by death in four, according to Amnesty International. In Uganda legislators sought the death penalty for homosexuality and although the anti-gay bill has since been watered down, ruling party MPs remain eager to see it passed. Nigeria and Gambia have passed tough new anti-gay laws in recent years, with Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh, calling homosexuals “ungodly, Satanic… vermins” in a speech last year.

“Our Deputy President Ruto is building himself to be the most dangerous man in Africa. If his strategy works much will burn,” Binyavanga Wainaina, a prominent Kenyan writer who last year came out as gay, warned.

Cameroon's Homophobia

It's not safe to be gay or support Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersexual (LGBTI) rights in Cameroon, according to a new report by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). The report, presented Wednesday in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, shows that violence against the LGBTI community and its advocates has increased significantly over the last few years.

Cameroon is one of 38 African countries where homosexuality is still illegal. Violators of section 347 of the country's penal code, which bans "consensual sexual relations between persons of the same sex," face heavy fines and up to five years in jail. Gay men and women and LGBTI rights activists in Cameroon are at risk of having their homes broken into or burned, the report said. They are also subject to constant threats and intimidation via text message and social media. The FIDH report accuses Cameroon's Catholic and Muslim communities of fueling the anti-gay sentiment. A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Yaoundé reportedly told FIDH researchers that, "homosexuality is a defect." Simon-Victor Tonye Bakot, the former Archbishop of Yaoundé, was vehemently anti-gay and blamed homosexuals "for the misery in Cameroon and the unemployment of our graduates." He also called same-sex marriage a "crime against humanity."
Cameroon's media have carried out their own anti-gay witch-hunt. In 2006, three newspapers published a list of "The top 50 gay public figures."

In August 2013, a government spokesman told journalists gathered at a press conference that the great majority of Cameroonians condemn homosexuality "because their religious beliefs are incompatible with homosexuality," and said, "the president's duty is to respect the will of the people and to enforce the current law." The government reiterated its stance in January 2014, declaring it would not repeal a law endorsed by the majority of the people.

Yves Yomb, who runs Alternatives-Cameroun, the country's oldest LGBTI rights group said "Every time we meet government officials to talk to them about violations of LGBT rights in Cameroon we're told there is no evidence."

Eric Ohena Lembembe, an outspoken journalist and gay rights activist who was tortured and killed in his home in July 2013, just weeks after he criticized government inaction over the threat posed by "anti-gay thugs." Lembembe's neck and feet were broken, and his face, hands, and feet were burned with an iron. The case, which shocked the international community, still hasn't been solved.

Alternatives-Cameroun, which was established in Douala in 2006, has weathered its own share of homophobic hatred. The group's headquarters were torched in 2013

Gambia's Homophobia

Gambian authorities arrested three men and accused them of committing homosexual acts, which are punishable with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment under a law signed in October, state television has said. The arrests followed a security operation and the men have confessed that they are gay. The country's National Intelligence Agency appealed to the public, especially parents and landlords, to help them stamp out homosexuality.

Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh faces global condemnation over the country's human rights record, in part because of the law, which introduced "aggravated homosexuality" as a crime. 

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/12/gambia-arrests-three-men-homosexuality-2014122303811692265.html

Homophobia increasing

Kenya's penal code says any person "who has carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature" is guilty of a felony and can be jailed for 14 years.

Aden Duale, the majority leader from President Uhuru Kenyatta's ruling Jubilee coalition said 595 cases of homosexuality had been investigated in Kenya since 2010.

He stated homodexuality is ”... as serious as terrorism. It's as serious as any other social evil," referring to a spate of attacks by al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab carried out in retaliation for Kenya's intervention in neighbouring Somalia.

"Can't we just be brave enough, seeing that we are a sovereign state, and outlaw gayism and lesbianism, the way Uganda has done?" another legislator Alois Lentoimaga said.

Anti-gay groups have emerged in Kenya after Nigeria and Uganda toughened up laws against homosexuals. Nigeria has outlawed same-sex relationships. Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh has said homosexuals are "vermin" and must be fought like malaria-causing mosquitoes.

One of these groups, The Save Our Men Initiative, has said it is launching a "Zuia Sodom Kabisa" campaign, meaning "prevent Sodom completely" in Swahili, to "save the family, save youth, save Kenya".

Homosexuality in Africa is illegal in 37 countries there.

From here

The Talibanisation of Uganda

 The Ugandan ministerial task team asked by the president to advise him on homosexuality falsified the information contained in the report given by medical and psychological experts, twisting it to show that homosexuality should indeed be further criminalised.

The experts – including academics from Marekere University and officials in the Ugandan ministry of health – said that, in their view and in terms of the best current medical knowledge, "homosexuality has no clear-cut cause", though they adduce some limited genetic evidence, and that "several factors are involved which differ from individual to individual. It is not a disease that has a treatment." The Scientist Consensus Statement concludes that homosexuality is not a disease or an "abnormality", but that it "can be influenced by environmental factors" such as "culture, religion, information, permissiveness". Homosexual behaviour, the statement says, "needs regulation like any other human behaviour, especially to protect the vulnerable", and concludes: "There is need for studies to address sexualities in the African context."

 The report to the president said: "Homosexuality is not a disease but merely an abnormal behaviour which may be learned through experiences in life." It quotes the experts saying that the "practice should be regulated", following that with the statement: "Presidential Advisor on Science Dr Richard Tushemereirwe stated that homosexuality has serious Public Health consequences and should therefore not be tolerated."  Tushemereirwe was not part of the 10-member scientists' panel.

MP David Bahati, the Bill's sponsor, said it was a "victory for Uganda" and for African tradition against Western influences. But the anti-gay thrust of the Bill has also been driven by Christian evangelical groups working in Uganda. Gay activists from Uganda sued American missionary Scott Lively, under the "alien torts" law, for spreading homophobia in Africa. Other African countries such as Nigeria have recently passed anti-gay laws.

The new law, which awaits Museveni's signature, updates a colonial-era law regulating "carnal knowledge against the order of nature". It extends the penalty of life imprisonment for actual gay sex to all behaviour, including touching, that might lead to or show an intention to have homosexual sex: it penalises "any erotic behaviour intended to cause sexual excitement or any indecent act or behaviour tending to corrupt morals". The law also makes it a crime, punishable by a prison term of up to seven years, for a citizen to fail to report homosexual activity to the authorities. Earlier this year, in a letter to a Ugandan newspaper, Museveni wrote: "You cannot call an abnormality an alternative orientation. It could be that the Western societies, on account of random breeding, have generated many abnormal people." He added that he thought others might become gay for "mercenary reasons" or, in the case of lesbians, a lack of sex with men.

Africa's Shameful Homophobia

Cameroonian Roger Jean-Claude Mbede, being gay came with a prison sentence, and ultimately, a death sentence. He died at the age of 35 in his home village of Ngoumou due to complications from a hernia he developed while in prison that never got proper treatment. Jean-Claude was imprisoned after he sent a text message to another man, which read: "I think I am very much in love with you." In Cameroon, because of homophobic laws that were personally championed by President Paul Biya, that was enough to be considered a criminal offense, punishable with time in prison.

The same weekend that Jean-Claude died, Nigeria enacted a new law that criminalizes freedom of speech, association and assembly as well as the activities of many human rights and civil society organizations working on behalf of members of the LGBTI community. The law provides for a 10-year prison sentence for anyone who supports, meets with or forms a group advocating for human rights for LGBTI people. Reports are already surfacing of arrests of those suspected of being gay. Similar legislation in Uganda needs only the signature of President Yoweri Museveni before becoming yet another repressive law which will even make it a crime not to report gay people to the police. In Liberia, a religious gathering has been collecting signatures pushing the government to sign a law banning same-sex marriage. In South Africa, the past five years have seen the rise of hate-crimes against gay people, including a phenomenon known as "corrective rape" - rape committed with a view to alter the victim's sexual orientation.  Homosexuals have been branded “vermin” by Gambia’s president Yahya  Jammeh in a new low over its anti-gay rhetoric. “We will fight these vermins called homosexuals or gays the same way we are fighting malaria-causing mosquitoes, if not more aggressively,” Jammeh said “As far as I am concerned, LGBT can only stand for Leprosy, Gonorrhoea, Bacteria and Tuberculosis; all of which are detrimental to human existence,” he added. 

 Homosexuality is a crime in 38 of 54 sub-Saharan countries but there exists a strain of cultural relativism that has allowed the apparent misconception among some people, both in Africa and the west, that homosexuality is an imperialist import and that those opposed to the human rights of gay communities are simply reclaiming their pre-colonial cultural values. It has become something of a catechism to proclaim that homosexuality was introduced to Africans by European colonisers. In August 2013, in his seventh inauguration speech, President Robert Mugabe was particularly derisive of the gay community. He urged young Zimbabweans to shun homosexuality as an abomination of humankind "that destroys nations, apart from it being a filthy, filthy disease". That speech relied on an unhealthy dose of homophobia, effectively using existing public disdain for homosexuality as a means to delegitimise the political opposition - with its liberal economics and politics - as part of the evidence that it was merely a puppet of the West. But Mugabe is certainly not alone in abusing the gay community for political gain.

Any person with the time to study the history of sexuality in traditional African cultures will discover that this claim is baseless. Indeed, the history of sexuality in traditional African societies has always been characterised by diversity in sexual practices and identities. Homosexual practices and identities are not new to Africa. What is new is the campaign for LGBT rights that has arisen in reaction to the revival of a homophobic legal and religious tradition inherited from European colonialism. For many, the apparent surge in anti-gay sentiment is only a response to the pressure being put on African governments by western governments, to, ironically, "act a certain way".

The movement against LGBT rights in Africa has brought together very strange bedfellows, African Muslim and Christian preachers with strong backing from rightwing American Christian organisations. This has culminated in the steps taken recently by the governments of Uganda and Nigeria, for example, to pass laws that criminalise same-sex relationships and impose very stiff penalties for anyone found guilty under such laws. The dehumanisation of members of the gay community across Africa has been justified by invoking both God and traditional African culture. However, for over a century the same religious groups now claiming to be the custodians of traditional African cultures have been at the centre of programmes to systematically efface Africa's traditional cultures on grounds that, in their view, such cultures are un-Christian and un-Islamic. Thus, the position adopted by many of Africa's political and religious elites on issues relating to LGBT rights owes more to their colonial religious education than it does to their traditional African roots. The very existence of "sodomy laws" imposed on many African cultures by British colonial rulers in an attempt to stem what they thought of as the sexual immorality of African cultures point to the presence of diversity in sexual practices among Africans prior to their encounter with Europeans.  So to suggest that Africa has no place for homosexuals is to imagine the continent's history as beginning when prude missionaries brought Bibles, long skirts and umbrellas as a marker of civilisation. The construction of sin and categorical notions of sexuality over the past four centuries on the continent are inextricably linked to colonialism, the Church and the ambitions of the state.

Some opponents of gay rights in Africa have consistently tried to argue that since there is no word for homosexuality in their African languages it must mean that gays did not exist in African societies until recently. This claim would first have to be proved through a kind of "linguistic archaeology" on all such languages. This has not yet been done. It is also unlikely to work on languages and meanings that evolved as they were passed down from one generation to another through oral means. The absence of words for homosexuality in some African languages, if this is true, is in itself proof that gay people were never considered as existing outside of the norm in such traditional African societies. Thus, it is more likely that the language of "othering" now used to discuss and describe gay communities in Africa is a remnant of colonialism. The move to specifically target homosexuals, the way Nigeria and Uganda have done, legitimises homophobia. And in so doing, it washes away actual history, and creates a new one, just as colonialism bid us to do.

Even as economies continue to grow (or at least the GDPs) and middle classes emerge sporadically, rampant inequality burns holes in the aspirations of the continent. Where then does this leave the gay community? They've merely become a red herring,  to divert attention from the failing economies and the many weak democracies across the continent and the need for many governments to seek support in alliances with religion. Gays are the new scapegoats for the problems of capitalism

Adapted from here

Mob 'Justice' Against Gays

In Abuja, capital of Nigeria, a mob armed with wooden clubs and iron bars, screaming that they were going to "cleanse" their neighborhood of gay people, dragged 14 young men from their beds and assaulted them, human rights activists said. The walls of houses where the men lived have been painted with graffiti declaring "Homosexuals, pack and leave." Four of the victims were marched to a police station, where they allegedly were kicked and punched by police officers who yelled pejoratives at them, said Ifeanyi Orazulike of the International Center on Advocacy for the Right to Health.Police threatened that the men would be incarcerated for 14 years, he said, the maximum prison sentence under Nigeria's new Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act, dubbed the "Jail the Gays" law.

Dozens of allegedly gay people have been arrested since President Goodluck Jonathan signed the bill into law in January. It not only forbids gay marriage, which carries a 14-year jail sentence, it makes it a crime for anyone, straight or homosexual, to hold a meeting of gays or to advocate human rights for gays. Convicted offenders can be jailed for up to 10 years.

From Here 

Gays to be jailed in Nigeria

Hundreds of men arrested and tortured by police as legislation criminalising homosexuality takes effect. It is the new law against fundamental freedoms.  It will affect health-care services to 3.4 million Nigerians living with HIV/AIDS as they will now be afraid to seek treatment in case people think they are gay.

In Nigeria a gay man has been lashed 20 times - the first conviction for sodomy since President Goodluck Jonathan signed a law criminalising homosexuality earlier this week. It contains harsh penalties for homosexual activity and membership in gay rights groups. “Persons who enter into a same-sex marriage contract or civil union commit an offence and are each liable on conviction to a term of 14 years in prison,” the law says. “Any person who registers, operates or participates in gay clubs, societies and organizations or directly or indirectly makes public show of same-sex amorous relationship in Nigeria commits an offence and shall each be liable on conviction to a term of 10 years in prison.”

Dorothy Aken'Ova, with the Nigeria-based International Centre for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights, told the BBC, "What this act is saying is that they gay people do not deserve to exist,"

European Union Managing Director for Africa, Dr. Nicholas Westcott, has said "We are concerned about the human rights and freedoms of all Nigerians as enshrined in Nigeria's own constitution and as enshrined in international conventions to which Nigeria is a party. And our concern is that this Act contravenes some of those provisions and puts at risk some of the fundamental freedoms that all Nigerian people should enjoy - the freedom of expression, the freedom of association, etc. That is our concern.”

The High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the Commission, Catherine Ashton, in a statement in Abuja yesterday, said "I am, therefore, particularly concerned that some provisions of the Act appear to be in contradiction with those fundamental rights, which are themselves guaranteed by Nigeria's 1999 Constitution, and to be inconsistent with the legal obligations enshrined in a number of international agreements to which Nigeria is a party,"

UK Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice, Jeremy Wright, said: “The UK opposes any discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The Bill also directly infringes on fundamental rights of expression and association, which are guaranteed by the Nigerian constitution and by Nigeria's international treaty obligations. We are concerned by the prospect this raises of further action against an already marginalised section of society."

An Islamic court in Nigeria's northern state of Bauchi has put on trial 11 Muslim men accused of being homosexuals in violation of their religion, a religious leader has told the BBC. Under Islamic law, a person can be sentenced to death by stoning if convicted of homosexuality.