Churches oppose same-sex rights Bill

A coalition of churches in Botswana has voiced its opposition to Parliament's latest effort to amend the Constitution to include gay rights. Voice of America reports Botswana’s Minister for State President, Kabo Morwaeng, introduced a constitutional amendment Bill last week. Among proposed amendments is the inclusion of a clause that would ‘protect and prohibit the discrimination of intersex persons and persons with a disability.’ However, churches are opposed to the move promoting gay rights. Said Abraham Kedisang, a pastor at the Apostolic Faith Mission – a church that issued a statement denouncing the effort to amend the Constitution: ‘These provisions portend grave threat for our Christian way of life, our democracy and, indeed, our republic as we have known it over the many decades.’ Botswana’s High Court decriminalised same-sex relations in 2019, after a legal challenge. In July 2023, the government proposed a Bill to incorporate gay rights into the Constitution, but hundreds of opponents protested the development. ‘The disturbing provision in the Bill threatens to destroy the cardinal structure of family life at the heart of Botswana's cherished Christian way of life, through the bringing of “intersex” legal provision that seeks to change the binary male and female structure of our society established and enacted by the almighty God,’ Kedisang said. The group Lesbians, Gay & Bisexuals of Botswana supported the court challenge in 2019. Its chief executive, Thato Moruti, said: ‘This issue of decriminalisation is a human rights matter, it is not a religious matter. It is an issue that is concerned with reducing systematic disadvantages on other people, especially the LGBTQI persons.’ The government filed a challenge against the 2019 judgment, but the Court of Appeal upheld the initial ruling in 2021.