Online Dating Fuels New Danger for Gays in India

MUMBAI—A gay Indian maritime engineer says he was lured into a trap during a visit to Mumbai last year.

When the 33-year-old was with a man he met through an online dating service, two others burst into his hotel room. One whipped and punched him. They took his laptop, a gold chain, camera and his ATM card, which they used to empty his bank account, he says.

The men also made a threat: If he went to the police, the robbers said, they would press criminal charges against him for having sex with a man and tell his colleagues and family that he is gay.

“I was dead scared,” said Rohit, who asked that his surname not be used because he feared the consequences of being publicly identified as homosexual.

Since India’s Supreme Court recriminalized gay sex more than a year ago, homosexuals have increasingly become targets of robbery and extortion, gay men and activists say. The trend has been fueled by the rise of Internet dating, which has become an easy way for urban, middle-class gay men to meet, but also exposed them to online predators.

Such cases underline the deep disconnect between more liberal and cosmopolitan parts of urban India and conservative norms that condemn homosexuality and leave gay people vulnerable to discrimination and blackmail.

India, the world’s largest democracy, is one of more than a dozen Asian countries that outlaw what in India’s case is defined as sex “against the order of nature.”

In December 2013, India’s Supreme Court found the law, which dates to the British colonial era, wasn’t unconstitutional and could be changed or repealed only by Parliament, effectively overturning a 2009 lower-court ruling that made consensual gay sex legal.

Source: Online Dating Fuels New Danger for Gays in India – WSJ

Kenya protesters warn Obama not to bring up gay rights in visit

It came a day after Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto, who is on trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague accused of crimes against humanity, told worshippers at a church service that homosexuality was “against the plan” of God.

“We have heard that in the US they have allowed gay relations and other dirty things,” Ruto said, according to the Daily Nation newspaper.

“I want to say as a Christian leader that we will defend our country Kenya, we will stand for our faith and our country.”

– Afraid Obama ‘will preach equality’ –

Ruto made similar comments in May when US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Kenya.

Homophobia is prevalent in many African countries and gay sex remains illegal in several nations, including Kenya where it was outlawed under British colonial legislation.

The march Monday was organised by the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya, a coalition of several churches.

Obama’s visit later this month will be his fourth to Africa since becoming US president, but his first to Kenya since taking office in 2009. He will also travel to Ethiopia.

Pro-gay rights activists warned of rising intolerance in Kenya, including attacks on homosexuals and alleged cases of lesbians being raped to “cure” them.

“The anti gay movement is spreading to Kenya… cases of discrimination and violence are increasing because of the very homophobic speeches,” said lawyer Erik Gitari, from the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

“Obama has been associated with equality and liberation, being the first black US president. They are afraid that he will preach equality here,” said Gitari.

In conservative Christian and Muslim countries in Africa, homophobia is a vote-winner.

In Uganda, legislators sought the death penalty for homosexuality and although the anti-gay law was watered down and then overturned, ruling party MPs remain eager to see it passed.

Nigeria and Gambia have passed tough new anti-gay laws in recent years, with Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh, calling homosexuals “ungodly, Satanic… vermins [sic]” in a speech last year.

In Kenya, too, a cross-party parliamentary group is seeking stricter application of existing anti-gay legislation.

Source: Kenya protesters warn Obama not to bring up gay rights in visit