One Step Forward, One Step Back

So, just as Uganda looks like withdrawing a bill that would have made homosexuality punishable by death, further south the government of Malawi has just sentenced its first ever gay couple to fourteen years' hard labour for the "crime" of getting engaged - a punitive sentence explicitly chosen for its deterrent value. In the words of the judge: "I will give you a scaring sentence so that the public be protected from people like you, so that we are not tempted to emulate this horrendous example."

This is bad enough even at first glance, but in fact it's worse - for, despite the reports by the world's media, including the BBC, Tiwonge Chimbalanga is a transgender woman, not a gay man, and the engagement was a heterosexual one. Unsurprisingly the Malawian authorities didn't view it that way, but why on earth is the international media conspiring to erase this woman's identity into the bargain? Isn't 14 years in a men's jail bad enough?