Aug 17, 2007News: Unequal Age of Consent Harms Gays in Chile
By vanrozenheim
(Chile) - A court in Antofagasta in the northern Chile found a 47-year-old man guilty of "abusing" a 17-year-old youth, convicting the man to 41 days in prison. Although the young man was just 12 days away from his 18th birthday at the time of the “crime” and testified that the sex was consensual, prosecutors pursued the case, claiming that the man “corrupted the child’s sexual morality.” Chile’s Criminal Code is highly biased against Gays, and the legal age of consent is 18 for homosexuals while 12 for heterosexuals.
The accused labourer was sentenced to 41 days in jail by the court, being spared of the 541-day jail term recommended by prosecutors.
The ruling - the first sodomy conviction to be issued in Region II since the country’s criminal law procedures were overhauled in 2001 - sparked outrage among Gay rights activists.
“We object to the fact that young people and couples are being qualified as criminals solely because of their sexual orientation. That is a serious human rights violation,” the letter read.
According to MOVILH, an additional source of concern is the Article 365 of the Code, which deals specifically with sodomy, because it can be used to target Gay men. The group condemned the different treatment of Gays as “arbitrary, unjust and hypocritical.”
