Majority Muslim Nations Where Homosexuality Is Legal

I wrote this to respond to a facebook comment that read in part;

Homosexualiy is not legal in the Muslim world. I don't know where you make this stuff up. Ask ISIS about it.

Well, I found 20 majority Muslim countries, out of 51[1], where homosexuality is legal.

1. Albania, Europe

Not only are same-sex relationships legal in Albania, they amended their constitution to strictly punish a crime when it is “related to gender, race, colour, ethnicity, language, gender identity, sexual orientation, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, health status, genetic predisposition, or disability.” In addition to this hate crimes legislation, they have hate speech legislation as well. The Albanian parliament amended its Criminal Code: “Providing to the public or distribution of deliberate materials containing racist, homophobic or xenophobic content, through the communication and information technology, is punishable by a fine or imprisonment up to two years.”[2][3]

2. Azerbaijan, Europe

Same-sex relationships are legal in Azerbaijan with no separate age of consent.[3]

3. Bahrain, Asia

Same-sex relationships were legalized in Bahrain in 1976 though the age of consent for such acts is still 21.[3]

4. Burkina Faso, Africa

Same-sex relationships were never criminalized in Burkina Faso. However there is a separate age of consent.[3]

5. Chad, Africa

Same-sex relationships were definitely legal in Chad until 2014. However they attempted to pass new legislation. Huffpost has homosexuality as illegal[4]. However the 2015 reports from ilga and Amnesty International have it as legal.[3][5]

6. Djibouti, Africa

In Djibouti same-sex relationships are legal.[3]

7. Guinea-Bissau, Africa

In Guinea-Bissau same-sex relationships are legal.[3]

8. Indonesia

Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, has given two provinces the right to govern by Sharia law as long as the law only applies to Muslims. However homosexuality is legal throughout the rest of the nation and if you are not a Muslim in those two provinces.[3]

9. Iraq, Asia

ILGA previously listed Iraq as unclear, but have since changed it to illegal. After the 2003 US invasion the 1969 penal code was implemented. This code did not outlaw homosexuality. However ILGA says it is illegal for three reasons.

1. Even though Iraqi law does not allow for a civil judge to refer to a sharia court, some do. 
2. They do not view ISIS as a separate state. 
3. Also police regularly target homosexuals.

Still, it is on this list, because technically throughout non-ISIS controlled Iraq, homosexuality is legal.[3]

10. Jordan, Asia

When Jordan abandoned the British penal code in 1951, it adopted its own code which does not outlaw homosexuality.[3]

11. Kazakhstan, Asia

Homosexuality is legal in Kazakhstan, however their close relationship with Russia has brought forth anti-homosexual propaganda laws. Still none have passed.[3]

12. Kosovo, Europe

Homosexual acts are legal in Kosovo and they forbid employer discrimination based on sexual orientation. Still the age of consent is different.[3]

13. Kyrgyzstan, Asia

Like with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan also has calls for anti-homosexual propaganda laws, but homosexuality is still legal there.[3]

14. Lebanon, Asia

In Lebanon, lesbianism is legal, but possibly not male same-sex behavior (punishable by one year in prison). Outlawed by the French penal code since 1943, in recent times, there were seldom arrests made for male same-sex behavior. In 2012, the police started to clamp down. In 2014, a judge seemed to overturn the law by allowing a transwoman to marry a cisman. However later that year, 27 men were arrested for homosexual behavior in a Turkish bath. Still they were never formally charged. ILGA says that it is illegal, but not everyone interprets the judge’s ruling that way.[3][6]

15. Mali, Africa

Homosexuality has never been illegal in Mali.[3]

16. Niger, Africa

Homosexuality has never been illegal in Niger.[3]

17. Palestine

In 1858, the Ottomans legalized homosexuality, but when the British took over after World War I, they enforced a penal code where male homosexuality was illegal. When Israel declared their independence in 1948, the British Penal Code that outlawed male homosexuality was still in place. Gaza was seized by Egypt which left the British code in place. The West Bank was seized by Jordan which changed its penal code to allow for all homosexuality in 1951.


So in 1967 when Israel acquired Gaza and the West Bank; they acquire one territory that banned male homosexuality and one that did not. In 1977, Israel replaced the British code with their own, but they still outlawed male homosexual acts. They later legalized them in 1988, three decades after the West Bank.


Gaza still operates under the British code where male homosexuality is punishable by 10 years. However Hamas is writing a harsher law that might go into effect in 2016 where male homosexuality is punishable by "100 lashes and up to five (5) years in prison, and execution if such behaviour happens three times."[3]

18. Tajikistan, Asia

Homosexual acts have been legal in Tajikistan since 1998.[3]

19. Turkey

As the former head of the last major caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, in 1858, Turkey legalized same-sex behavior throughout the empire. Homosexuality has been legal in Turkey longer than slavery has been outlawed in the USA.[3]

20. Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus

In 2014, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus voted to legalize homosexuality.[3]

One Maniac

This meme prompted a fair amount of research today, so I think it deserves a blog post. June 17, 2015, a white supremacist killed 9 people in a historic black church in South Carolina.

TV shows are cancelled

TV Land pulled the Dukes of Hazard (1979-85) from their line up.  First, was there any other show that was pulled? I could only find the one.  Second, technically the Dukes of Hazard was cancelled 20 years ago.  It was just pulled from syndication.

Historical statues are vandalized

This is one of two points that the meme gets absolutely correct.  Confederate monuments have been vandalized and they continue to be vandalized.  So far the only comparative event in response has been the placing of rebel flags at Martin Luther King's Georgia church.

Confederate merchandise banned

"Ban" is even the word that the ebay spokesperson even used.  Amazon, Walmart, Sears, and ebay have all decided to no longer sale rebel flag merchandise.

Unprecedented attack on Southern heritage

Growing up in Georgia, there was an important part left out of the Southern heritage argument.  The rebel flag was added to the Georgia flag in 1956 to oppose race mixing.  In 1961, South Carolina raised the rebel flag above their legislature to oppose race mixing.  While the Confederate flag does not have a well known segregationist past, the rebel flag does.  Honestly the rebel flag deserves to be attacked given the fact that two state governments used rebel flags in opposition to race mixing and did not remove them until the 21st century when even Bob Jones had to remove their opposition to race mixing.  Doesn't this Southern heritage deserve attack?

Race relations set back 40 years

By what criteria?  We just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act.  Why not 50 years?  Why not 20 years?  This is arbitrary.

DOJ donated millions to victims families

This is the research that prompted this blog.  According to Newsweek and Reuters the Department of Justice fast tracked 29 million dollars from the Crime Victim Assistance Formula Grant program for the victims of the Charleston shooting.

First, let's provide some background.  In 1984, Congress passed the Victims of Crime Act of 1984 (VOCA).

The federal government passed the Victims of Crime Act of 1984 (VOCA) to provide financial support to state compensation programs that were unable to cover victims of federal crimes. VOCA also led to the development of victim compensation programs in the 14 states that lacked compensation programs at the time VOVA was enacted (S. Derene, personal communication, May 21, 2014). VOCA established the Crime Victims Fund (CVF), a federal source of funding that reimburses out-of-pocket expenses and funds services for victims and survivors of crime. The Department of Justice administers these funds, which come from offenders convicted of federal crimes in the form of criminal fines, penalties for criminal convictions, forfeited bail bonds, forfeitures of profits from crime, and charges for convictions that range from $25 for misdemeanors to $400 for felonies (Office for Victims of Crime 2013a).

In 2001 the Patriot Act amended the CVF making possible for private donations to be made to the CVF.  These payouts are not lump sums.

Crime victim compensation is a direct reimbursement to or on behalf of a crime victim for the following statutorily identified crime-related expenses:

• Medical costs.

• Funeral and burial costs.

• Mental health counseling.

• Lost wages or loss of support.

Other compensable expenses may include the replacement or repair of eyeglasses or other corrective lenses, dental services and devices, prosthetic devices, crime scene cleanup, and forensic sexual assault exams. However, property damage and loss are not covered.

 Congress has placed a number of restrictions on how CVF can operate.  From 1984 to 1999, the CVF would payout everything that it took in.  In 2000, in response to fluctuating income, Congress started to limit the payouts to build up a rainy day fund.

Starting in 2000, in response to large fluctuations in deposits, Congress placed a cap on funds available for distribution. These annual caps were intended to maintain the Fund as a stable source of support for future victim services. From 2000 to 2012, the amount of the annual cap varied from $500 million to $705 million. In FY 2013, the cap was set at $730 million.

The plan worked. By 2013, the CVF had amassed 9 billion.  VOCA has become a vital part of how our nation responds to tragedy.  Over 4,400 agencies rely on VOCA and they serve over 3 million victims annually.  In response to the financial downturn, Congress cut VOCA's budget by 65 million. The 2009 Stimulus bill provided 100 million to VOCA and expanded the CVF with Crime Victim Assistance Grants.  As best I can tell, this was mainly a rebranding.  The grants have all the restrictions as the regular CVF payouts.

Now that the background has been established so that we even know what we are talking about, the DOJ says that Reuters and Newsweek were wrong.  They misunderstood that the 29 million grant was not for the Charleston shooting only, but for South Carolina as a whole to help with all "the sexual assault victims, spousal abuse victims, child abuse and neglect victims, and previously underserved victims of violent crime."  The 29 million probably did not go far enough.

Nothing

The meme posts the ISIS flag, but to date there has been no firm connection of the shooter to ISIS which is composed of only about 200,000 people.  Still, let's use ISIS as a comparison.

• There are no ISIS shows to cancel.  There is no show where the heroes fly ISIS flag.
• There was vandalism of mosques in response to the Chattanooga shooting.
• You cannot buy the ISIS flag on Amazon either.
• ISIS is almost universally hated and deserves to be attacked.  Still Muslims as a whole have been attacked.  Franklin Graham proposed issuing a ban on Muslim immigration similar to the ban on Asian immigration from 1924-1965.

Now to the VOCA response to the Chattanooga shooting; the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC), that administers VOCA payouts, posted a page dedicated to the Chattanooga shooting.  (Here is the page for the Charleston shooting.) They provided information on how to be at least partially reimbursed for "the financial burden of funeral, mental health, medical, and other expenses related to the shootings".  The OVC provided links to charities that can also help.  There was mental health information including on "coping after terrorism".  Clearly this is more than nothing.

I am getting tired of these conservatives spreading false information and poisoning conservatism. Everything that I have written is publicly available. I will admit that there was a bit of a learning curve trying to understand VOCA.  Even the great Reuters misunderstood the details.  Still, nothing I have done on this blog post is anything that Uncle Sam's Misguided Children could not have also done.

Answering a facebook question

source

Here is the short answer. It was not always so. Even in Exodus 21:22-23, feticide is not necessarily a capital crime and Exodus is full of capital offenses like murder.

Following tradition, including contemporary Biblical interpretation, English common law came up with the "born alive rule".

If a woman be quick with child [five months pregnant], and by a Potion or otherwise killeth it in her womb; or if a man beat her, whereby the child dieth in her body, and she is delivered of a dead child, this is a great [misdemeanor], and no murder: but if the child be born alive, and dieth of the Potion, Battery or other cause, this is murder: for in Law it is accounted a reasonable creature, in rerum natura [in existence], when it is born alive.

Common Law thought that pregnancy was a dichotomy; the vessel started growing months before the soul was implanted. There was no punishment for killing a souless vessel, but if there was a soul, the crime was a misdemeanor unless the child was born outside the womb alive.

In 1984, the Massachusetts Supreme Court argued that medical science had outdated the "born alive rule" and "“infliction of prenatal injuries resulting in the death of a viable fetus, before or after it is born, is homicide.” Since then at least 38 states have updated their laws accordingly.[1]

PS - 1984 is the same year that New York overturned the common law tradition that said it was not rape if a husband forced his wife to have sex even under threat of death.

What is he talking about?

Last July, the Boy Scouts of America ended a ban on homosexual scout leaders.  In response, John Hawkins sent out the following tweet.

The following day he wrote the blog, Gay Scoutmasters Will Lead The Boy Scouts On A March Into Oblivion.  August 2, it became a meme for his Right Wing News that has been in my facebook newsfeed a number of times. He tweeted later that day that the meme had already become very popular.

As of the writing of this blog post the meme has 83,000+ likes and 31,000+ shares.   With the background in place let's get into the blog where Hawkins was able to flesh out his idea in more than 140 characters would allow.  Again the full blog is available here.

The parents of Boy Scouts across the country may be too cowed by political correctness to say it, but the chances that teen Scouts are going to be bad-touched in the woods by Scoutmasters just shot through the roof. That shouldn’t be a shocking statement; it’s just common sense. Sending gay men into the woods with teenage boys is just as stupid and irresponsible as sending straight men into the woods with teenage girls.

Let me note at this point that some people may say, “You’re claiming gay men are all pedophiles.”

Not at all.

For example, we’ve seen lots of stories lately about adult female teachers having sex with their teen-age students. Most of these women could be better described as sexual predators than pedophiles because they’re not targeting young children, they’re targeting teens. Are most gay Scoutmasters going to be sexually attracted to a 10 year old boy? Probably not. Are they going to be sexually attracted to a good-looking 16 year old Scout? Yes, they are and that will be an issue for the parents of many of those Scouts.

While Hawkins focuses on allowing gay men "into the woods" he ignores several realities about the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.

First, the Boy Scouts' homosexual ban was also against lesbian women.  Homosexuals were banned outright whether or not they were male or female.  

Second, closely tied to lesbian scout leaders, heterosexual women have been scout leaders for years.  The Boy Scouts have put in place policies reflecting this reality.

Adult Supervision/Coed Activities

Male and female adult leaders must be present for all overnight coed Scouting trips and outings, even those including a parent and child. Both male and female adult leaders must be 21 years of age or older, and one must be a registered member of the BSA.

As a precaution, one on one interaction is prohibited.  A scout leader, male or female, is never to be alone with a scout or even privately text a scout.

One-on-one contact between adults and youth members is prohibited. In situations requiring a personal conference, such as a Scoutmaster’s conference, the meeting is to be conducted with the knowledge and in view of other adults and/or youth.

The policy of two-deep leadership and no one-on-one contact between adults and youth members includes digital communication. Leaders may not have one-on-one private online communication or engage one-on-one in other digital activities (games, social media) with youth members. Leaders should copy a parent and another leader in digital and online communication, ensuring no one-on-one contact exists in text, social media, or other forms of online or digital communication.

What about this "in the woods" problem?  How does the Boy Scouts deal with males and females needing to change clothes and shower?  Well, the scouts are given privacy except when health and safety must be protected.  Adults, male or female, are not allowed to watch scouts change, shower, or use the restroom.

Privacy of youth is respected. Adult leaders and youth must respect each other’s privacy, especially in situations such as changing clothes and taking showers at camp. Adults may enter youth changing or showering areas only to the extent that health and safety requires. Adults must protect their own privacy in similar situations.

Inappropriate use of smart phones, cameras, imaging, or digital devices is prohibited. Although most Scouts and leaders use cameras and other imaging devices responsibly, it is easy to intentionally or inadvertently invade the privacy of other individuals with those devices. The use of any device capable of recording or transmitting visual images in or near shower houses, restrooms, or other areas where privacy is expected is inappropriate.

The showers are segregated into scout, adult male, adult female sections.

Shower Facilities

Whenever possible, separate shower and latrine facilities should be provided for adults, youth, and females. If separate facilities are not available, separate shower times for adults, youth, and females should be scheduled and posted.

They have to be posted so no potential predator can try to excuse his behavior by saying he did not know.

Further, adults are only allowed to sleep with scouts if they are a parent or a guardian.

Tenting

When camping, no one is permitted to sleep with a person of the opposite sex or in the tent of an adult other than his or her own spouse, parent, or guardian. Assigning youth members more than two years apart in age to sleep in the same tent should be avoided unless the youth are relatives.

Could predatory men and women violate these standards? Sure, but they could before the ban was lifted as well.

Also, guess what?  The Girl Scouts have coed chaperons as well.

Q. Can men be Girl Scout troop leaders?

A. Absolutely! Every Girl Scout troop requires two or more adults (minimum one unrelated female) with one adult designated as the leader.

While their policy is not as stringent as the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts also segregate the sexes.

3. Within a camp or overnight setting, males must not share sleeping, dressing, or restroom facilities with non-related females.

4. Troops may from time to time designate an activity as an all-female activity (i.e. a mother/daughter event), as long as this arrangement does not exclude any girl from participation, e.g. a daughter whose father has full or shared custody. The proper girl/adult ratio designated in Volunteer Essentials must be maintained for all activities.

5. During father/daughter overnight events, the male participants will stay in units separated from the girls/females. Female adult volunteers will be available to provide overnight supervision of girls housed in separate units from males. Male participants who wish to stay with their daughters may do so in a designated camping area provided that the Council receives notification signed by the girl’s legal guardian.

At least one Girl Scout group also places restrictions on unrelated females sharing a sleeping space with the scouts.

It is not mandatory that an adult sleep in the tent or cabin with the girls. If an adult female does share the sleeping area, there should always be two unrelated adult females present.

Coed volunteers is just the reality of the world that we live in.  Sometimes, Dad has to work so Mom comes or vice versa.  Groups generally take all qualified volunteers that they can find.  If Hawkins had bothered to google the Boy Scout or Girl Scout volunteer policy he would have known that both organizations have been using coed volunteers for a long time.