Following the example set by Uganda, Nigeria announced today that President Goodluck Jonathan had signed a bill that would make same-gender relationships illegal.
It is not known when, exactly, the president signed the bill.
Al-Jazeera America reports:
Under the terms of the law, anyone who enters into a same-sex marriage or civil union can be sentenced to 14 years in prison while any such partnerships entered into abroad are deemed “void”.
It also warns that anyone who registers, operates or participates in gay clubs, societies and organisations or who directly or indirectly makes a public show of a same-sex relationship will break the law. Punishment is up to 10 years in prison, it adds.
“Only a marriage contract between a man and a woman shall be recognised as valid in Nigeria,” the law states.
Read more here.
While not involving the death penalty or lifetime imprisonment, this is still a troubling trend to see spread.
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The silence from our church leaders is deafening. I guess they drank the Kool-aid that goes like this: pressure from the West elicits an anti-colonial anger that entrenches them more deeply.
And yet, outrage from the West helped mitigate the laws from “kill the gays” to “jail the gays for a long time.”
The Anglican leaders there support this law quite vocally. Shouldn’t there be an alternative view of the loving God?
¨troubling¨ is being mild I believe. The grave apprehension I feel for LGBTI citizens in Uganda and Nigeria is only overshadowed by the real danger to them (by those who proudly profess to be holy) of genocide. Bloody murder.