By: Rod Swift
Re: What religion causes...

Side note:  The Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe has been infiltrated
and influenced by right-wing conservative missionary Christians,
hence the reflections in policy of hard-right-wing conservative
Christian policies.  Beware, this is WHAT the right wants in the
US eventually...


REUTERS, March 5, 1997
Castrate gays, Zimbabwe campaigner says
By Cris Chinaka

   HARARE, Zimbabwe - A former Zimbabwean nationalist leader has launched a
campaign to persuade anti-gay President Robert Mugabe's government to punish
homosexuality with castration and public whipping.

    The crusade, calling for public lynching and castration of convicted
rapists and gays, began a week after police said they were investigating
charges of homosexual rape against former President Canaan Banana.

    ``These crimes are on the increase and Zimbabwean laws against sexual
perverts, especially rapists and gays, are too soft,'' Michael Mawema, a
former nationalist politician, told the first meeting of his campaign Tuesday
night.

    Mawema also said the law must punish the kind of witch doctor who is
alleged to prescribe rape, incest or child abuse to cure some sexual
diseases, including AIDS, or to secure businesss success.

    About 100 people turned up to hear him say both Christianity and
Zimbabwe's traditional African culture were unequivocally against ``these
perverts.''

    ``I am proposing that those convicted of these sexual crimes, such as
homosexuality, rape, incest and bestiality, be whipped at least 100 times in
a public square, and that, if they are men, they be castrated,'' he said.

    Zimbabwe outlaws sodomy, the charge used to convict homosexuals. Mugabe
has led public attacks on gays, saying they are worse than dogs and pigs, but
has remained silent over allegations that his predecessor Banana forced a
male bodyguard to have sex with him repeatedly.

    Banana, 61, a married Methodist church minister who was president until
1987, has not commented on the charges against him, which a court judge ruled
were ``probably true'' and intelligence officials hinted were plausible.

    Mawema said the current maximum penalty of seven years for sex crimes was
too lenient.

    Mike Auret, director of one of Zimbabwe's leading human rights watchdogs,
the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, said Mawema was wrong to
advocate the use of the old biblical law that regards homosexuality as a sin
worthy of death.

    ``We must do something to curb rape, child abuse and bestiality, but gay
is a different class,'' he said.

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