By Arnold Neliba
LILONGWE, JULY 14, 2023 (CISA)-Catholic faithful across the country joined the nationwide peaceful street protests against same sex marriage and in defence of marriage, the family and human sexuality.
Led by the Episcopal Conference of Malawi (ECM) in collaboration with leaders from other mother bodies and faith groups, thousands took to the streets on Thursday July 13 to “make clear its stand on matters of family and human sexuality.”
“The Episcopal Conference of Malawi is solidly convinced that amidst the misleading discussions and debates going around in various fora at the moment, it must make its stance known and clear…,” said the bishops in a statement ahead of the protests.
Amidst the nationwide protests, the Constitutional Court in Malawi continues to hear a case in which Dutch national Jan Willem Akstar and transgender Malawian woman Jana Gonani where they argue that Malawi’s anti-homosexuality laws violate their fundamental rights, including privacy and dignity.
Homosexuality is an offense in Malawi and punishable by a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.
According to the bishops, there is need to do much more in animating families in the country stressing that the Church teaches sexuality as a gift but sexual acts only permissible between married partners- a man and woman and that each sexual act must be expressing both love and openness to procreation.
The problems on families according to the bishops are “largely imposed on Africa, Asia and Latin America by foreign societies; taking advantage of abject poverty in our countries as well as high illiteracy levels in the same continents.”
While leading the protests in Blantyre, Archbishop Thomas Luke Msusa said same-sex marriages are a sin, and allowing such unions would lead to the extinction of the human race.
“If we change the way we live as a family, it means we will cease to exist,” he said. “If we continue to marry a man with a man, surely the offspring, no children will come, then no life in the world, no life in Malawi,” said the archbishop of Blantyre.
In Lilongwe, Archbishop Desmond Tambala of Lilongwe archdiocese led protesters who marched through Lilongwe carrying placards before handing a petition to lawmakers outside parliament.
“Homosexuality goes against everything that we believe as a people,” said the petition read out to parliamentarians by Sheikh Dinala Chabulika, of the Muslim Association of Malawi.
“We are a family-oriented nation, a nation that fears God, and that is why the church stands against same-sex campaigners,” said Rev. William Tembo of the Malawi Council of Churches who said same-sex relationships were “strange, and we are not ready to accept these unfamiliar phenomena in Malawi”.
Similar petitions were presented to government offices across the country at the end of the peaceful march.
