Cabinet decides to end the ban on homosexuality
A leap day that counts: in 2016, the Seychelles decided to end an old colonial law against gay men.
On the morning of 29 February 2016, the cabinet of the Seychelles met for an extraordinary session. On the table were several bills that President James Michel had announced in his State of the Nation address almost two weeks earlier. Alongside a limit on presidential terms and an anti-corruption law, there was a small but momentous change to the Penal Code. It was to decriminalise homosexuality.
The cabinet approved it. The reasoning was sober. The island state in the Indian Ocean had to fulfil its international human rights obligations, and these included protection against discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. As early as 2011, the country had promised the UN Human Rights Council that it would lift the ban. Little had happened since.
The law dated from British colonial times. Anyone who had sex "against the order of nature" faced up to fourteen years in prison. Convictions were rare, but the provision hung like a shadow over gay men.
In May came the vote in the National Assembly, on the International Day Against Homophobia of all days. Fourteen members voted yes, and the same number abstained. There were no votes against. Foreign Minister Joel Morgan, who presented the bill, stated that sin was a matter for religion, not the state. Fabianna Bonne, founder of the country's only LGBTI organisation, interpreted the many abstentions positively: nobody had wanted to stand in the way of the reform.
The Seychelles thus became one of the few African states to abolish such a ban of its own accord. In large parts of the continent, the situation remained bleak. All the nicer that the way was paved on a day that only comes around every four years.