Haiti Senate votes to ban same-sex marriage and public support for homosexuality

The global arc of history continues to bend towards equality, but not without the occasional setback. The Haiti Senate has just passed a bill, all but guaranteed to be signed into law, that bans same-sex marriage and public shows of support for gay rights, using the usual arguments:

The Senate approved a bill late Tuesday that said “the parties, co-parties and accomplices” of a homosexual marriage can be punished by three years in prison and a fine of about USD 8,000.

“All senators are opposed to same-sex marriage, so this simply reflects the commitments the senators made during their campaigns,” Senate President Youri Latortue told AFP. Haiti’s constitution established a secular republic but the country is marked by deep religious beliefs. “Although the state is secular, it is people of faith who are the majority,” Latortue said, stressing the commonly held belief in Haiti that homosexuality is a Western practice only.

[I]t also called for banning “any public demonstration of support for homosexuality and proselytizing in favour of such acts.”

Because if you don’t believe gay people exist, then they don’t. That’s how reality works, after all. Well-known fact. (To be fair, the idea that gayness isn’t real is hardly exclusive to Haiti.)

It does raise a question, though: If many or most Haitians don’t believe homosexuality is “practiced” in their country, then why bother passing laws against it? Seems like a waste of time and effort to curtail behavior that supposedly no-one engages in. Why, you’d think they weren’t being rational about this.

Just once, I’d like to see a legislature use religion as a basis to protect minority rights. What a change that would be.

(via Joe.My.God.)

Edit (09/23/17 @ 6:11 PM ET): Typo fix.