The Southern Cross, a weekly promoted by the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference (which includes the bishops of South Africa, Botswana, and Swaziland), said that new legislation in Nigeria and Uganda, and similar proposals in Cameroon and Tanzania, would be used to “persecute people on the basis of their sexual orientation.”
The editorial noted that the laws were not required to outlaw homosexual acts, which are already illegal in most African countries.
The Southern Cross argued that the legislation therefore violated the injunction of the Catechism of the Catholic Church against “every sign of unjust discrimination” against homosexuals.
The editorial called upon the bishops of Africa to fight “against discriminatory laws and violence against homosexuals, many of whom are Catholics.”