Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has
said the “gay world” goes against nature.
Speaking Thursday at a women's HIV/AIDS
and gender rights conference in Harare, the 88-year-old Mugabe said
homosexuality doesn't belong in Zimbabwe, the AP reported.
Mugabe told the crowd that male
homosexuality violates women's rights because it denies their right
to being mothers.
“Mothers were given the talent to
bear children. That talent doesn't belong to men,” he said.
“When God created Adam … if Adam
had desired a person like him it would not have made him any
happier.”
“When a man says he wants to get
married to another man, we in Zimbabwe don't accept it. We can't
talk of women's rights at all if we go in that direction. It will
lead to extinction.”
Mugabe was responding to earlier
remarks by United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Navanethem Pillay, who arrived in Zimbabwe last Sunday and referenced
laws which criminalize gay sex and silence supporters.
Mugabe has previously rejected calls to
protect gay people in a constitution being drawn up under a
power-sharing deal.
He once created an uproar when he
called gay people “lower than pigs and dogs.”
(Related: Robert
Mugabe to David Cameron: “To hell with you” on gay rights.)