WINDHOEK, Namibia (LifeSiteNews) – A High Court in Namibia declared the country’s laws that criminalize sodomy “unconstitutional,” claiming they ran contrary to laws prohibiting discrimination based on a person’s sex.
The High Court in the nation’s capital, Windhoek — a court of first instance for cases relating to the country’s constitution — declared Friday, June 21, that the common law crimes of “sodomy” and “unnatural sexual offences” to be “unconstitutional and invalid” in a push to impose LGBT ideology despite strong opposition from the nation’s own population, legislature, and government officials.
In its ruling, the court inconsistently both invoked the country’s “democracy society” to justify its judgment and went on to acknowledge that the majority of Namibia’s citizens supported the anti-sodomy laws. The court stated, “We are not persuaded that in a democratic society such as ours … it is reasonably justifiable to make an activity criminal just because a segment, maybe a majority, of the citizenry consider it to be unacceptable.”
The court went on to claim the laws were unjust and discriminatory despite the fact that the discrimination clause of the constitution does not include “sexual orientation.” The judges also declared that holding that sodomy is “an abominable vice” is due to “prejudice” and “personal aversion,” failing to acknowledge that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all condemn sodomy as an “unnatural sin.”
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The court’s ruling overturns longstanding laws dating to 1927, which Namibia maintained when it gained independence from South Africa in 1990. The judgment can be appealed.
In its legal arguments, the government pressed the judges to resist the attempt to legislate from the bench, arguing that the repeal of a law belonged to parliament, not the courts. Namibia Attorney General Festus Mbandeka stated that “one of the purposes of the ban on homosexual sodomy is the moral views of Namibians that certain forms of sexual behaviour are immoral and unacceptable.”
Acknowledging the relation of law and the moral order, the government argued the law was thus intended “to foster moral behaviour.”
In May 2023, Namibia’s Supreme Court had similarly attempted to rule that same-sex “marriages” performed outside the country had to be recognized by the government, a move that prompted strong opposition from Namibia’s religious leaders and parliament.
Defying the Supreme Court’s attempt to impose western acceptance of LGBT ideology, at the prompting of the Prime Minister, in September 2023 parliament unanimously passed a bill defining marriage to be a union between a man and a woman.
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According to the provisions of the bill, same-sex “marriages” contracted between Namibians and foreigners abroad will not be recognized as marriages in the predominantly Christian African nation. The bill further bans the promotion, solemnization, participation in, and advertising of such unions. The bill likewise defines marriage as a union between persons of the opposite sex and spouses as persons constituting half of a legal union between people born genetically male and female.
Resisting international pressure to accept LGBT ideology, in November 2023, Namibia rejected a treaty with the European Union (EU) that could impose an anti-life and pro-LGBT agenda on the African nation.
Namibia is not the only African nation to push back on homosexuality in recent years. In May 2023, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed a law that the country’s parliament passed in March that put in place provisions strictly limiting homosexual behavior and identification, calling for the death penalty in certain cases of rape and child molestation, to the chagrin of Western leaders.
Museveni has spoken against the West’s criticism of the law, telling the Ugandan parliament last month, “Nobody will move us.” “(Homosexuality is) not genetic, it’s not hormonal, it’s a psychological disorientation.”
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