Namibia: Prime Minister Blasts Plan for Gay Castrations Overrules Homophobic Cabinet Minister's Demands Home Affairs Minister Claimed Gays 'Involved in Satanism'

Compiled by Badpuppy's GayToday Prime Minister Hage Geingob has dismissed claims by Jerry Ekandjo, a Cabinet Minister, that Namibia is set to take steps that will make same-sex affection a crime. "There is no chance that such a law is being planned," Geingob said in response to a question in Parliament on Monday. Prime Minister Hage Geingob On November 6, Ekandjo, Namibia's Home Affairs Minister, had announced a scheme to put in place the necessary legal machinery to "curb the spread of homosexuality in society". Ekandjo had appealed for heavy penalties and even for the castration of homosexuals in the country as they were "involved in Satanist practices" and "are lower than pigs and dogs". "If a male dog knows its right partner as a female dog, how can a human being fail to notice the difference?…Today it is homosexuality, tomorrow it will be the right to walk naked, the day after tomorrow it will be the right to abuse drugs. ... I earnestly call upon homosexuals in Namibia to repent their wrongs before society. I call upon them to repent their sins before God. This is the only way Namibia can develop as a people which considers certain values as fundamental to the welfare and survival of the nation." Prime Minister Geingob allowed that parliamentarians such as Ekandjo have a right to express their views on sexual morality, but that as overseer of legal issues arising in the Namibian Parliament, he should have have been notified of any such plans to inaugurate anti-homosexual laws. If such laws had been introduced, Ekandjo's anti-gay legislation would have conflicted with Namibia's Constitution which explicitly states that no citizen may be discriminated against on account of sexual orientation.

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