Welcome Back, Politic Blunder!

As perhaps one of you will have noticed, due to a combination of imminent coursework deadlines and an Israeli invasion of Gaza, your Politic Blunder correspondent hasn't been active in the past few days. Behold my triumphant return!

The picture (above), in addition to being a peace offering to my gay male and straight female readership (and concomitantly a defiant affront to my straight male and lesbian readership), flags a truly shocking story. 

In Senegal, nine men were yesterday convicted of conspiracy to commit "unnatural acts" and were sentenced to eight years in prison, which they frankly may or may not see out alive. The pervasive and violent homophobia in Africa is an often forgotten issue, and this is especially heinous an oversight given Africa's AIDS epidemic, which the clandestine gay communities of Africa are particularly sucseptible to. Several countries in Africa including Senegal, Namibia, Egypt and Somalia criminalise homosexuality under the term "unnatural acts", and several more are in the process of pushing similar laws through parliament. Mugabe has openly called homosexuals "worse than pigs and dogs", and the president of Gambia has threatened to behead any homosexuals he catches in his country.

It is a matter for academic debate whether the backwards religious or socially motivated bigotry is a cause of Africa's poverty, or a product of it. What's clear is that this is a huge problem in Africa, and one that Politic Blunder hopes is the subject of more attention in the future.