Woman can't be a lesbian because she has children

Aderonke Apata has been refused asylum and is waiting for her final(?) appeal to be heard before being deported.

The government barrister has argued that;

There's seems at least 3 clear objections to this; Sexual preferences are not binary, there is a clear motivation for LGBTQ people to conform when they are at risk when they don't (which seems everywhere) and that by deporting her whether they consider her at risk or not as a self identifying lesbian she is subject to criminal charges in Nigeria.

As a bonus would the barrister for the home office have drawn an equivalence to race if she wasn't black?

This from a government that presents as progressive on LGBTQ issues.

It's a terrible argument and hopefully it also wont hold legally. Not the same thing sadly.

The progressiveness of government is somewhat separate from the activities of the home office.

still http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...t-9509738.html

Outrageous she's been treated this way but the judge deciding against the home office would be a great result.

What perhaps makes little sense is conditioning persecution based asylum on the particular kind of persecution.

It's objectively hard to develop an operative legal standard for what constitutes being homosexual, as it is objectively hard to develop any clear standard at all (other than self-identification, but that's clearly not operational legally). On the other hand, it should be possible to develop a standard that identifies people who have been persecuted, be it for being Jewish, Christian, lesbian, or whatever, the important thing being that it be for some socially defined condition that in our society is viewed as acceptable.

And yet we continue to send £270 million in aid to this evil and corrupt regime, up £70m from last year, despite Dave's threats to cut that aid if this law were passed.

Admittedly withdrawing the aid would be a largely symbolic gesture - I have no clue why we're shipping a couple hundred million to a country with a GDP of £500bn+ anyway. **** 'em.

I'd want to understand where the aid goes and I'm generally not a fan of withdrawing aid to those that need it because of th actions of their government.

The other issue is that if we are serious in condemning Nigeria for passing this legislation what the **** are we doing telling a woman she isn't gay and must be deported when we know that the Nigerian authorities are likely to prosecute. And this to stealinpotatoes point we can't prove lesbianism if the criteria is to not have had sexual relations with men but we can know she will be persectuted for being a lesbian should she return, which should be enough.

Exactly this. That should really only be the point of issue, why the Home Office is getting involved with the dog and pony show of her gay-or-not-ness is beyond me. I'm not clear what agenda is being served here, but it would seem that there's more to this than meets the eye.

If they are personally subject to the persecution for being homosexual then it really shouldn't matter one jot what their sexuality is; but what about people who haven't been targeted yet?

Do they have to get 'caught' before they can seek asylum? If not what other criteria can we use beyond whether or not they are homosexual and that then there has to have some legal basis doesn't it?

That's presupposing there are immigration controls which some are trying to circumvent which is certainly the view of the home office and not changing any time soon.

I doubt there is much more to this than meets the eye. If you read about how LGBT asylum for is handled it's not pretty.

I'm an open borders sort, so don't misinterpret my perspective, but from a legal perspective I can't see how operationally one can apply a standard that reacts (in a special way) to persecution that is not yet manifest. There is the additional problem of assessing evidence that originates in a different society and legal system. From an inferential standpoint, the probability that a self-identified homosexual is homosexual is quite high to begin with simply because when there is a social (or legal) stigma against homosexuality, openly declaring it when one is not is very unlikely, but when the self-identified homosexual has 5 children, the likelihood goes down significantly. Bayes's theorem.

I think we have a similar perspective but legally it can work operationally. Self-identification can be taken as the default with the onus on the home office to demonstrate to some court standard that it's immigration fraud.

We shouldn't worry about some fraudulent cases getting through. It's nothing compared to sending people back to hide themselves away in fear (or worse)

That sounds reasonable.

Can't see any evidence that the change in presidency will much improve Ms. Apata's situation.

The APC's manifesto mentions gender equality quite a few times, but is silent on the issue of gay rights.

She's won her case and is now granted refugee status

Aderonke Apata win's