The Real Thing Ministries

A Presbyterian church in Malawi has welcomed a 14-year jail sentence handed down to two Malawian men accused of homosexual offences after publicly holding a traditional engagement ceremony in a country where same-sex relationships are a crime. "As a church we don't support homosexuality or same-sex marriages. That is both un-African and un-Christian," said the Rev. Levi Nyondo, general secretary of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian, Livingstonia Synod.

"We are happy they have been sentenced to 14 years in jail," Nyondo said in a 20 May interview from the northern city of Mzuzu. A magistrate's court in Malawi's commercial capital, Blantyre, on 20 May gave Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga the maximum sentence of 14 years in prison after convicting them of buggery and gross indecency. The two men were arrested in December 2009  after their engagement ceremony.

Source: ENI