UN report: Criminalizing homosexuality legitimizes homophobia and hate crimes

Quote:

Criminalising homosexuality amounts to torture in many of the 76 countries where same-sex relationships are outlawed, a United Nations report has declared. Prof Juan Mendez, the organisation’s special rapporteur on torture, has called for decriminalisation in his latest submission to the UN’s human rights council on the grounds that the bans – which sometimes carry the death penalty – legitimise homophobia and hate crimes. In one of the strongest denunciations of laws that are enforced in many African, Asian and Middle Eastern states, Mendez, a former Argentinian political prisoner, urges governments to reconsider their statute books. “A clear link exists between the criminalisation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons and homophobic and transphobic hate crimes, police abuse, community and family violence and stigmatisation,” his report says.

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Nice to see a UN report call out the disgusting and alarming behavior of governments and societies that sanction violence against LGBT persons.

Now if only more countries took the UN seriously...:(

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1oPC1V3