The Catholic Archbishop of Colombo has voiced his concern that LGBTIQA+ tourists are being encouraged to visit Sri Lanka.
Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith has declared that a “strange culture” is emerging in the country, raising concern that he’d recently seen a letter sent to the nation’s Tourism Authority asking permission to promote LGBTIQA+ tourism. Cardinal Ranjith says encouraging LGBTIQA+ tourism would influence the nation’s children and lead to “normalising” homosexual lifestyles.
Homosexual acts are illegal in the country which is a former British colony. Unlike other countries that maintained British colonial laws such as India and Singapore, Sri Lanka is yet to repeal their legislation. The country’s Supreme Court has ruled that any imposition of penalties are incompatible with modern society, and a bill to remove the laws was presented to parliament in 2022.
Sri Lanka however does recognise people who are transgender and people can update their official documents without undergoing surgery, there are also anti-discrimination protections against people on the basis of gender and sexuality.
In his address the religious leader said gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender tourists would be a danger to children.
“We cannot allow our healthy children to become victims of those with homosexual needs,” he said, his comments reported by Newswire.
He also spoke about safe-sex programs in high schools which make condoms available to young people, and rallied against suggestions there would ever be marriage equality in Sri Lanka.
The Archbishop also said in his Sunday sermon that people with homosexual tendencies should be treated with kindness and respect, and not forced to change.
“We must not harass those who are born with homosexual tendencies. They should be treated with kindness. However, those who are not born with such tendencies should not be forced to change,” he said.
