Highest Court Strikes Down Laws Banning Homosexual Relations in South Africa

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa —  Apartheid-era laws banning homosexual relations were struck down Friday by South Africa’s highest court, which ruled that men convicted of sodomy since 1994 could demand monetary damages and have their criminal records cleared.

The constitutional court’s decision formalized guarantees granted in 1994, when white minority rule ended and a provisional constitution banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, race or gender.

The National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality said Friday’s ruling could lead to adoption, marriage and other rights for homosexuals.

“The court has said that lesbians and gay men . . . have a right to equality and dignity and privacy,” said Zackie Achmat, the group’s director.

South Africa was the first country to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in its constitution. But the laws that criminalized sex between men remained on the books.

Sex between women was never officially banned but was symbolically stigmatized by the old laws, the court said.

Under apartheid, sodomy could be punished with up to seven years in prison. Men were not even allowed to have casual contact at social gatherings that could be construed as homosexual behavior.

The former South African military practiced so-called “aversion therapy” on gay men, applying electric shocks to victims while they viewed images of naked men, a report on human rights abuses said last year.

“Just as apartheid legislation rendered the lives of couples of different racial groups perpetually at risk, the sodomy offense [built] insecurity and vulnerability into the daily lives of gay men,” the 11-judge panel said in its ruling.