We have little tolerance for gays seeking asylum

This article was published in The Sydney Morning Herald 25 May 2010

Last week a court in Malawi sentenced a gay couple who staged a same-sex wedding to 14 years in prison with hard labour for "violating the natural order". Magistrate Nyakwawa Usiwa told the two men that he was handing down a particularly "scaring sentence so that the public [would] be protected from people like you, so that we are not tempted to emulate this horrendous example".

Malawi is one of 37 African countries in which homosexuality is considered illegal. Around the world, there are another 26 countries where all homosexuality is considered a criminal offence (and an additional 17 countries where male homosexuality is illegal but female homosexuality is not criminlised, largely because it is thought not to exist.)