Iraq delays vote on “kill the gays” bill as prime minister meets with Joe Biden

Iraq’s Parliament postponed a planned vote last week on a brutal piece of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that would have made same-sex acts punishable by the death penalty.

The bill, which would have amended an anti-prostitution law, was second on lawmakers’ agenda during last Monday’s parliamentary session, according to Reuters. However, two sources told the outlet that the vote was postponed due to time constraints and disagreements over proposed amendments.

Related:

Iraq’s government proposes law to ban homosexuality

Activists say the proposed law would “allow the Iraqi government to legally get away with murder.”

In addition to imposing the death penalty or life in prison for same-sex relations, the bill would also impose a minimum seven-year prison sentence for “promoting homosexuality,” which is undefined in the bill. It also specifically targets transgender women with up to three years in prison and fines for “imitating women,” according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Global perspectives delivered right to your inbox

Our newsletter bridges borders to bring you LGBTQ+ news from around the world.

Daily

Weekly

Good News

While consensual gay sex is not explicitly outlawed under current law in Iraq, vague “morality” clauses in the country’s penal code are routinely used to target LGBTQ+ people. A March 2022 report from HRW and Iraqi LGBTQ+ rights group IraQueer detailed how widespread violence against LGBTQ+ people at the hands of police and other armed groups in the Muslim-majority nation go unpunished. Iraq was one of five Middle Eastern and North African countries included in a 2023 report examining how state actors and private individuals use social media and dating apps to entrap and extort LGBTQ+ people.

Last August, Iraq’s media regulator banned the term “homosexuality,” requiring traditional and social media platforms to replace it with “sexual deviance.”

The bill amending Iraq’s “Law on Combatting Prostitution” was introduced last that same month by independent Member of Parliament Raad Al-Maliki, who said it was necessary to “preserve the entity of the Iraqi society from deviation and calls for ‘paraphilia’ [abnormal sexual impulses] that have invaded the world.”

“Iraq’s proposed anti-LGBT law would threaten the lives of Iraqis already facing a hostile environment for LGBT people,” Rasha Younes, senior LGBT rights researcher at HRW, said at the time. “Iraqi lawmakers are sending an appalling message to LGBT people that their speech is criminal and their lives are expendable.”

According to HRW, the proposed bill conflicts not only with nondiscrimination and privacy protections under the Iraqi constitution but also with international human rights law.

As Reuters notes, the postponement of last Monday’s vote came as Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani was scheduled to meet with President Joe Biden in Washington. The meeting was reportedly to focus on increased U.S. investment in Iraq.

At the same time, diplomats from three Western countries told Reuters they had pushed Iraqi lawmakers not to pass the anti-LGBTQ+ bill. “It would be very difficult to justify working closely with such a state at home,” one senior diplomat said. “We were very, very direct: if this law is passed in its current form, it would have catastrophic consequences for our bilateral and business and trade relations.”