Official: No Room for Gay Rights in Zimbabwe's Constitution

BY Advocate.com Editors

June 22 2010 2:35 PM ET

Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe's political party adamantly opposes protecting LGBT citizens from imprisonment and harassment in a new constitution, currently being drafted in one of Africa's most antigay countries.

Didymus Mutasa, Zimbabwe's minister of presidential affairs and the secretary for administration in Mugabe's Zanu-PF party, said Monday that "practices such as homosexuality, abortion, and euthanasia, which offend human and public morality, should be outlawed." Mutasa's comments at a Zanu-PF meeting were first published by RadioVop Zimbabwe.

Homosexual acts already are outlawed in the country, and Mugabe's diatribes against gays are among the most vitriolic of all African leaders'. "It degrades human dignity," Mugabe said in 1995 of homosexuality. "It's unnatural, and there is no question ever of allowing these people to behave worse than dogs and pigs. If dogs and pigs do not do it, why must human beings?"

Zimbabwe's current constitution, which lawmakers began crafting prior to Mugabe's 30-year rule and the country's independence from the United Kingdom in 1980, has been amended 19 times.

Previous attempts at crafting a new constitution were interrupted last year by disagreements between delegates, according to VOAnews.com.