Rahul Sharma (Editor)

Death penalty for homosexuality

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The death penalty for homosexuality has historically been implemented by a number of regimes world wide. It is currently still extant in a fairly small number of countries or parts of countries, mostly or all due to sharia law. Even though the law may allow the death penalty it does not mean that it is carried out. Conversely de facto death penalties may apply, for example the Washington Post said that in Iraq "The penal code does not expressly prohibit homosexual acts, but people have been killed by militias and sentenced to death by judges citing sharia law."

Contents

Current regimes with the death penalty

  • Mauritania, only applies to Muslim men
  • Sudan for a third conviction
  • Northern Nigeria where several states have adopted sharia law
  • Yemen
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Qatar applies only to Muslims, for extramarital-sex regardless of the gender of the participants
  • Somalia where several southern states have adopted sharia law
  • Iran
  • Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
  • There is legal dispute whether the law of the United Arab Emirates allows for the death penalty for homosexuality, however Amnesty International could find no instances of the death penalty.

    Other entities supporting the death penalty

  • Chalcedon Foundation
  • UK

    From 1533 it was a capital felony for any person to "commit the detestable and abominable vice of buggery with mankind or beast," was repealed and re-enacted several times, until it was reinstated in 1563 remaining unchanged until 1861.

    United States and colonial America

    Colonial America had the laws of the United Kingdom, and the revolutionary states took many of those laws as the basis of their own, in some cases verbatim. The last law where the death penalty was on the statute books was South Carolina, the old British law was repealed until 1873, twelve years after the mother country.

    The number of times the penalty was carried out is unknown, records support two executions, and a number of more uncertain convections, such as "crimes against nature".

    References

    Death penalty for homosexuality Wikipedia