Opinions
LGBTQ rights and inclusion amid Botswana’s constitutional review process
All Batswana must be included in debate

The Botswana courts are among the very few in Southern Africa that has set a trajectory in realizing and protecting LGBTIQ+ rights.
In 2016, the Botswana Court of Appeal, in the Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana (LEGABIBO) registration case, proclaimed that “members of the gay, lesbian and transgender community, although no doubt a small minority, and unacceptable to some on religious or other grounds, form part of the rich diversity of any nation and are fully entitled in Botswana, as in any other progressive state, to the constitutional protection of their dignity.” This remark would go on to set the tone for queer rights in Botswana and the region.
The presidential promise of advancing together
Commencing the 2018 16 days of activism against violence on women and children campaign, President Mokgweetsi Masisi acknowledged LGBTIQ+ people as vulnerable a group who continue to face stigma and discrimination in Botswana. He went on to say that they need equal protection under the law. This an authentic statement because they do form part of the rich diverse nation of Botswana. In response, the members of the LGBTQI+ community through an open letter thanked him for his words and encouraged him to live up to his call for protection. In 2019 during his election campaign, the president of Botswana promised Batswana a fair and equal constitutional review process that reflects the voices and concerns of all Batswana — regardless of their social, economic and gender status. This coming at a time when his government was fighting for the recriminalization of LGBTIQ+. This appeal by the State was a push for the continuous exclusion of LGBTIQ+ and denying them their fundamental rights to freedom of expression, liberty, privacy, dignity and protection under law. In its sense, being LGBTIQ+ is a political statement and to fully enjoy the privileges that come with the bill of rights as stipulated in the constitution one needs the backing and pledge of allegiance from the government.
A constitutional review – a space for all?
In January 2022, President Masisi had promised that the constitutional review process would be inclusive of LGBTIQ+ people. This had given hope and a form of relevance and belonging to the LGBTIQ+ community that finally we were being seen by the highest office in the land. This presidential promise had encouraged LGBTIQ+ people to practice their fundamental civic duty and contributing to a better and inclusive nation. The constitutional review process commenced at the anticipation of Batswana, but more anticipated was the LGBTIQ+ community. Would this process be inclusive, and progressive and reflect the diversity of Batswana as promised by the president bearing in mind his consistency and failure to live up to his words or were the LGBTIQ+ community once again a pawn in the political game? A December 2022 Afrobarometer report showed that an increasing number Batswana are losing trust in the president’s office. This is followed by the recent controversial reports around the president interfering with the judicial system in the just concluded Bamalete land case. One tends to wonder the legitimacy and question the transparency of the mandate of the Office of the President in ensuring that all Batswana are included and have a fair access to social, economic and legislative practices. In our fight for the realization and promotion of human rights for all, to become true leaders and masters of diversity and inclusion, we must be deliberate and intentional about practicing inclusion from all dimensions.
The bare minimum and reflection of diversity
President Masisi had appointed the Presidential Commission of Inquiry to review Botswana’s Constitution and spearhead this process. In country of 2.4 million people representation matters. The commission of inquiry to tick the gender box have eight females form part of the 19 tasked force team. The rather disappointment that when diversity and representation is addressed, it is only limited to cisgendered male and female. It does not consider the broader gender and sexuality spectrum. Such an essential democratic and civic process needs representation of already marginalized groups, such as young women, people living with disabilities and LGBTIQ+ people. After all, the High Court did state that they [the LGBTIQ+ community] form part of the rich diversity of Botswana. The president, after his promise ensuring inclusion of LGBTIQ+ people in the constitutional review process, made an intentional decision to exclude LGBTIQ+ persons in the commission of enquiry. The Presidential Commission of Inquiry task force had experts from the public workers union, House of Chiefs, Village Development Committee, public health education sector, religious community, advocates for people with disabilities and the attorney general’s office. The setup of the commission contributes to multiple forms of exclusion of sexual and gender minorities; as country that recently decriminalized a group that had been marginalized and vulnerable for decades, the intentional representation of LGBTIQ+ people would have been present in the commission of inquiry.
The ignorance of considering the law
In 2021, when the Botswana Court of Appeal decriminalized consensual same sex-sexual relations, this saw a landmark change and the continuous, infectious trajectory from the 2016 LEGABIBO registration case. This put another stamp of approval of legitimacy by the courts that human rights indeed are for all. The fundamental rights to expression, liberty, privacy and equal protection under the law are to be enjoyed by LGBTIQ+ people. This was now the law as pronounced by the courts. The process of constitutional review failed to live up the law — to protect and include LGBTIQ+ people. Society and its norms are dynamic and evolutionary and transform as a society and the world change. LGBTIQ+ people mobilized one another and collectively entered a setting that from the onset aimed to exclude them. The constitutional review process setting included the Kgotla setting, which for many queer people and women is already an unwelcoming place filled with patriarchal dominance. Galvanized with religious and traditional fundamentalist the Kgotla platform seemed like a deliberate intention to continue excluding women and queer people. In 2021, women who wore pants were turned away from receiving the COVID-19 vaccinations at the Kgotla spaces. Queer resilience is a powerful thing as this did not discourage LGBTIQ+ people from exercising their democratic rights. LGBTIQ+ showed up and showed cause. If there is one thing to learn from a community who for years have been criminalized and ostracized is that we continue to have hope and that the struggle for true freedom and liberty continues. A luta continua!
The presidential commission of LGBTIQ+ erasure
The commission of inquiry submitted its final report with recommendations to the president for consideration. The report was also made available to the public to engage with. The voices captured and recommendations made caused an outcry from the public, civil society organizations and human rights movements. The report displayed the continuation erasure LGBTIQ+ people and goes against the orders of the courts which are now laws and the utterances of President Masisi. The commission needed to investigate best practices and incorporate these into the recommendations to the president for review. It needed to have identified and differentiated constitutional matters from civic and social matters. The recommendations took little to no human rights-based approach resulting in multiple discriminatory and harmful recommendations that impact various vulnerable and marginalised groups in Botswana. The report was unsafe and lacked inclusive and protective language, this in addition to it already being anti-gender and anti-LGBTIQ+. This goes against the principles and ethics of human rights, body autonomy and doing-no-harm.
Bradley Fortuin is the LGBTIQ+ Program Officer at the Southern Africa Litigation Center and is social justice activist with over 10 years of experience in program design and strategic management, focusing on developing, implementing, and strengthening LGBTIQ+-led movements.
Opinions
WorldPride begins — let’s hope it ends well
D.C. events kick off despite boycotts, Trump attacks

As WorldPride begins with Trans Pride on May 17,, we can only hope when it is over on June 9t we will all be raving about its success.
When D.C. first got designated as host city in November 2022, after Taiwan didn’t work out, there were initial estimates of 2.5 to 3 million people showing up in D.C. to party and celebrate. We talked about this 50th anniversary of Pride as celebrating five decades of advocacy, visibility, and unity, for the LGBTQ community in Washington, D.C., honoring the past, celebrating the present, and inspiring the future.
Anticipation was greatly tempered when Trump, the felon, racist, anti-trans homophobe, liar, and all-around SOB, won the election in November 2024. Then the planning became more difficult and stressful. But here we are and the excitement is palpable. The signs are up around D.C. and Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has been so great for the LGBTQ community, is walking a tightrope to keep D.C. afloat, never knowing what the felon in the White House will do next. To her credit, she is doing an amazing job keeping him at bay. But his vicious anti-trans positions, and his general homophobia, have put a cloud over WorldPride. His immigration policies have led countries around the world to tell their citizens to be very wary if they come to the United States. It is projected as foreign tourists stay away, the United States could lose $12.5 billion this year.
Despite all that, the people at Capital Pride Alliance, who are running WorldPride, have done a commendable job of putting together a program for everyone. From the Human Rights Conference, to the parade, to the festival, where Cynthia Erivo will perform. Shakira will be doing the opening concert at Nat’s stadium, and there are more superstars at the dance party at the RFK site, that should be the site of the new Commanders domed stadium by 2030.
But let us never forget all this is taking place at a time when the United States has a president who is creating havoc in the world and embarrassing us even among our allies. He is a liar and a grifter, a man who thinks nothing of putting people’s lives in danger whether it is sending people illegally to prisons in El Salvador, or creating a culture so nasty, a trans person takes their life in their hands just walking down the street.
He surrounds himself with people like Stephen Miller who wants to suspend habeas corpus, and his Nazi sympathizing co-president, Elon Musk, who just got Trump to invite a bunch of racist South Africans to move here. It’s going on while we have a Secretary of HHS, RFK, Jr., who takes his grandchildren swimming in a polluted creek, and tells others to risk their children’s lives by avoiding vaccines. A president who has cut $800 million in grants from NIH meant to do research to save lives in the LGBTQ community, along with cutting grants and programs that have worked successfully to save people in Africa from dying of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and polio. This is what we are dealing with. Like it or not, this is the backdrop to WorldPride 2025.
Yet, if we give in to this horror, we make it even worse. WorldPride is a way we say to people here in the United States, and those around the world, we in the LGBTQ community are never going back into the closet. We are proud, we are smart, and we are valuable. We make the world a better place, and we will continue to do so despite the pig who occasionally sits in the Oval Office when he is not out golfing or grifting. We can never allow the gay Republicans who make excuses for him, the gay Secretary of the Treasury who has yet to speak out for his community, to go unchallenged. Their silence hurts us as much as the felon sitting in the Oval Office because as the Blade wrote, they are traitors. It is unfortunate, but once again the slogan silence = death has never been more real.
So, speak up, speak out, never stay quiet. Let the world know you are here, and you care. Your life is important and fuck them if they don’t understand that or value it.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
Opinions
Let love and compassion guide our response to Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis
Former president is diminished, but he and family deserve love and prayers

When I heard Joe Biden had serious prostate cancer, I felt immediate compassion for him and his family. I am a prostate cancer survivor myself. Then I heard how Trump, and some of his MAGA Republicans, responded and was amazed at how they are able to constantly sink to new lows. Trump’s son posted on X “What I want to know is how did Dr. Jill Biden miss stage five metastatic cancer or is this yet another cover-up???” Clearly, they will never give up on being vile human beings.
The equally disgusting Joe Scarborough had on a doctor who declared he positively knows Biden must have known about his cancer years ago, although he knows nothing about the case. The reality, coming from many specialists, is at this time only Biden’s doctors know when he was diagnosed, and whether he even had regular PSA tests done, and when. Based on the latest research, the American Urological Association (AUA) age guidelines are that they do not recommend routine PSA screening for men 70 or older. This is because prostate cancer is normally very slow growing, and if you were to be diagnosed after 70, you will likely die of something else. Then you had the felon in the White House talking about “stage nine” cancer. Is he really so dumb? Guess he is as he tries to prove it nearly every time he opens his mouth. Talk about diminished.
Now is Biden diminished from what he was years ago? It is clear he is. Should the people around him have tried to hide that in order to have him run again, no! But the-then president’s hiding health issues is nothing new. Wilson was severely impaired and it is said his wife Edith ran the country for his last year in office. The same was said about Nancy Reagan when they hid Reagan’s Alzheimer’s. Kennedy hid his Addison’s disease and other infirmities, and Trump hid how sick he was from COVID, when being helicoptered to the hospital. Is it wrong to hide these things from the American public, yes, but clearly not unusual. Actually, the media is often complicit in this, which many said they were in Biden’s case. Then you have a guy like Jake Tapper who is happy to be complicit, so he can now write a book about it and make loads of money. Very sad.
I think the time has come in the case of Joe Biden, for us to just offer him and his family some love and prayers, and the hope he will be able to manage his cancer and live a long life. Then turn the page and deal with the things that will matter more to the lives of the American people today.
Those are the things the felon in the White House, and his Nazi sympathizing co-president, along with the MAGA Congress, are trying to do to them. Things like taking away their healthcare, and thereby also causing the closure of some rural hospitals. Things like the mass firings of federal workers, including thousands of veterans. Things like making it harder for our veterans to access their healthcare by cutting services at the Veterans hospitals. Things like increasing costs for groceries, and other items, due to the felon’s ineffective use of tariffs. Things like seeing college costs go up, as foreign students who pay the full fare at most schools, are sent home or denied visas. Things like making it harder to file for social security by closing so many offices, and pretending to lower drug prices, but not really doing it. Things like cutting research looking for cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, MS, HIV/AIDS, and a host of other diseases, which will hurt people for decades to come. Things like creating havoc in the world, and bowing down to dictators. Things like walking away from our allies and making the world a less safe place for all of us, including abandoning Ukraine, and cozying up to his friend Putin. I always believed Putin has some dirt on him. Trump said Zelenskyy would be responsible for WW III. But it’s Trump who will be, if it happens. Then we must put a focus on the idiot who is secretary of HHS, RFK Jr., and whether he will allow the flu and covid vaccines, being readied for the fall, to be available in a timely manner. Will he continue to disparage all vaccines, and by doing so, cause deaths here, and around the world. Things like abandoning the fight against climate change and thereby screwing the planet and future generations.
These are the things the American public really needs to know about, and care about. It may have been wrong to hide Biden’s being diminished, but he is no longer in office, and he no longer impacts people’s lives on a daily basis. The felon in the WH does, and that is where the focus must be.

A first generation American from Queens, N.Y., Kameny was a decorated WWII veteran. With a prodigious 148 I.Q., he earned a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University. In 1957 he was recruited by the Army Map Service, a pioneering agency in space exploration.
In 1953 in the wake of McCarthyism, President Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450 that prohibited homosexuals from military or civilian employment. Having nothing to do with workplace conduct, the Army learned that Kameny might be a homosexual. When confronted, he equivocated and was terminated. Unlike then thousands of other homosexuals terminated from government employment, Kameny fought back.
He took on the military and Civil Service Commission including being the first openly gay man to file an appeal about gay rights to the U.S. Supreme Court. He helped co-found and chair the Mattachine Society of Washington, the first gay rights organization in the nation’s capital.
He wrote letters to, among others, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. He founded and chaired the Eastern Conference of Homophile Organization, the nation’s first regional gay organization.
In the 1960s homosexuality, even with a consenting adult in the privacy of one’s bedroom was criminal. The police entrapped and extorted gay men. The American Psychiatric Association classified homosexuality as a mental illness. A bar could lose its license if there was more than one homosexual in their establishment. Homosexuals were considered dangerous, deviant and demented.
Kameny coined the phrase “Gay Is Good.” He organized picketing called Annual Reminders each July 4 from 1965 to 1969 at Independence Hall. The picketers were the first to call for gay equality. The 1965 Annual Reminder had 39 activists making it then the largest demonstration for gay rights. In the mid-1960s the country had an estimated 300 gay and lesbian activists.
He published a newsletter that became the Washington Blade, now the nation’s oldest LGBTQ weekly newspaper. Kameny and Barbara Gittings, the mother of the movement that demonstrated for the right to be heard at the 1971 American Psychiatric Association meeting. Their panel at the 1972 meeting with a masked psychiatrist using a pseudonym and voice modulator was so impactful that the APA created a panel to determine if homosexuality as a mental illness was based on science or discrimination. In 1973, that classification was removed.
He advised gays and lesbians who were the subject of discharge from federal government service. He identified test cases and referred them to the ACLU, Lambda Legal and other counsel. Slowly, but surely those cases began a process for LGBTQ equality.
His efforts led D.C. to be the first city to overturn its sodomy criminal laws. He helped found the first national LGBTQ organization, the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations. His efforts laid the groundwork for HRC and National LGBTQ Task Force.
After Stonewall in June 1969, he chaired a meeting of NY, Philadelphia and D.C. activists that authorized and helped organize to help remember Stonewall the first New York Pride Parade. He believed that Stonewall could be the movement’s Boston Tea Party. He marched in that 1970 parade holding a picket emblazoned with “Gay Is Good.”
He was the first out person to run for Congress as the D.C. delegate. Money left over from his campaign was used to fund the first gay rights television commercial. In July 1975, he was the first to be advised by the Civil Service Commission that it would eliminate homosexuality as a basis for not hiring or for firing a federal civilian employee. In 1977, he attended the White House’s first meeting with gays and lesbians.
Kameny died on Oct. 11, 2011, National Coming Out Day. He lived to see marriage equality approved in several states. He attended the signing by President Obama of the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which enabled gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. Kameny is buried in the Congressional Cemetery. On his tombstone is inscribed “Gay Is Good.” Over 70,000 of his documents are in the Library of Congress and picket signs from the pioneering demonstrations are housed in the Smithsonian Institution.
On May 21 LGBTQ national organizations gather in front of the Supreme Court. One hundred activists will each hold a candle for his 100th birthday. Fifteen national leaders will engage in picketing similar to the 1965 picketing at the White House and Independence Hall. They will honor Frank Kameny; celebrate the 10th anniversary of marriage equality (Obergefell v Hodges, 2015); and push back on those who would attempt to render us invisible, deny our history and undermine our equality. We will remember the nation’s loss when it fired a Harvard Ph.D. in astronomy because of his status as a homosexual. History repeats itself. This month the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the federal government to terminate transgender servicemembers solely because of their sexual orientation. How far we have come. How much farther we have to travel.
Malcolm Lazin is the national chair, Kameny 100. He is the executive director, LGBT History Month and executive producer of three LGBTQ documentaries including Gay Pioneers. He was an adjunct professor of LGBT History and Rights at New College of Florida. www.kameny100.org.