LGBT rights in Saudi Arabia
LGBT rights in Saudi Arabia 
|
|
|---|---|
.svg)
|
|
| Same-sex sexual activity legal? | Illegal |
|
Penalty:
|
Fines, floggings, prison time up to life, torture, chemical castrations,whipping, torture, and/or death penalty on first offense. People convicted twice face execution. Vigilante executions are very common as well, especially by families who want to "save face". The police participate in executions/torture or turn a blind eye to it. Islamic Sharia law is strictly and emphatically applied (see below) |
| Gender identity/expression | –none |
| Military service | –no |
| Discrimination protections | No protection, discrimination is encouraged, enforced and heavily applied to the LGBT community |
| Family rights | |
| Recognition of relationships |
No recognition of same-sex relationships |
| Adoption | –no |
LGBT rights are not recognized by the government of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi social mores and laws are heavily influenced by Arab tribal customs and ultra-conservative Wahhabi Islam. Homosexuality and transgenderism are widely seen as immoral and indecent activities, and the law punishes acts of homosexuality or cross-dressing with execution, imprisonment, fines, corporal punishment, or whipping/flogging.
Saudi Arabia has no criminal code as traditionally the legal system of Saudi Arabia has consisted of royal decrees and the legal opinions of Muslim judges and clerics, and not legal codes/written law. Much of the subsequent written law has focused on the areas of economics and foreign relations. Reformists have often called for codified laws, and there does appear to be a trend within the country to codify, publish, and even translate some Saudi criminal and civil laws.
In 1928, the Saudi judicial board advised Muslim judges to look for guidance in two books by the Hanbalite jurist Marʿī ibn Yūsuf al-Karmī al-Maqdisī (d.1033/1624). Liwat (sodomy) is to be
"treated like fornication, and must be punished in the same way. If muḥṣan [commonly translated as "adulterer" but technically meaning someone who has had legal intercourse, but who may or may not currently be married] and free [not a slave], one must be stoned to death, while a free bachelor must be whipped 100 lashes and banished for a year."
Sodomy is proven either by the perpetrator confessing four times or by the testimony of four trustworthy Muslim men, who have been eyewitnesses to the act. If there are fewer than four witnesses, or if one of them is not upstanding, they are all to be chastised with 80 lashes for slander.
In the 1980s, Saudi King Khaled issued numerous royal decrees designed to guarantee support among religious conservatives in the aftermath of an uprising of religious fundamentalists in 1979, known as the Grand Mosque seizure.
The "Rules of Apprehension, Temporary Custody & Precautionary Detention Regulation" codified the criminal code on homosexuality by listing it among the crimes that warranted arrest and detention. In addition to law enforcement, a second royal decree formally established the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) and gave this committee the power to authority to arrest and detain people who violate the traditional teaches of Islam, including acts of homosexuality and cross-dressing.
...
Wikipedia