Nobel Peace Prize Winner Defends Law Criminalising Homosexuality in Liberia
THE GUARDIAN: Exclusive: In joint interview, Tony Blair refuses to comment on Liberian president's remarks supporting anti-gay laws


The Nobel peace prize winner and president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has defended a law that criminalises homosexual acts, saying: "We like ourselves just the way we are."

In a joint interview with Tony Blair, who was left looking visibly uncomfortable by her remarks, Sirleaf told the Guardian: "We've got certain traditional values in our society that we would like to preserve."

Liberian legislation classes "voluntary sodomy" as a misdemeanour punishable by up to one year in prison, but two new bills have been proposed that would target homosexuality with much tougher sentences.

Blair, on a visit to Liberia in his capacity as the founder of the Africa Governance Initiative (AGI), a charity that aims to strengthen African governments, refused to comment on Sirleaf's remarks.

When asked whether good governance and human rights went hand in hand, the British former prime minister said: "I'm not giving you an answer on it." » | Tamasin Ford and Bonnie Allen in Monrovia | Monday, March 19, 2012

Legislating Gay Hate in Lithuania
THE GUARDIAN: If the Baltic state perseveres with new homophobic laws, it has no place in the European Union

How would you feel if your government tried to render you invisible? If they denied you access to healthcare or healthcare information? Isolated you from people like yourself? Prevented you from having a relaxed, fulfilling romantic life? Stigmatised and bullied you? If your character was constantly slandered and libelled but when you tried to defend yourself, or just tried to live your life peaceably, you were criminalised?

In July, Lithuania issued a law forbidding the "promotion of homosexuality" in places where children would be exposed to it. Which sounded very much like the ludicrous and culturally corrosive legislation that Britain used to have in the now widely ridiculed Section 28. So far, so bad. But things could be about to get a whole lot worse for some of our gay neighbours in eastern Europe.

It's following a familiar pattern. First, you start by claiming that you are protecting the children – an easy and emotive popular argument to win, however bankrupt your goals are – and then you enlarge your agenda. This is what is happening.

A mere two months later and the net is widening. Changes to articles 310 in the penal code, and 214 in the administrative code are being debated in the Seimas (Lithuania's parliament). They will criminalise – with the threat of a fine, community work or imprisonment – anyone involved in the "promotion" of homosexuality in "any public space". This, in the words of Nicola Duckworth, Europe director at Amnesty International, is "a new low in Lithuania's slide to state-sponsored homophobia."

But what would this new law mean? That gay people in Lithuania will not be able to access health promotion material, publicly organise themselves, advertise their businesses, have a gay press, stand up for themselves in public when they are bullied, share or express their culture. It means that they will suffer more discrimination, more harassment. It also invites the question: what next (or indeed, who next?).

Like the now-abolished Section 28 in the UK, it is a bully's charter giving state approval for the harassment of a particular – and already vulnerable – set of people. But where Section 28 was largely toothless and totemic, 310 is harsh and wide-reaching. Could we next be seeing attempts to recriminalise gay sex? >>> Joseph Galliano | Monday, September 14, 2009