BREAKING: "Kenyan Supreme Court allows LGBTQ+ groups to register after 11-year legal battle."

After an 11-year legal battle, the Kenyan Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by the government to bar the registration of LGBTQ+ lobby groups, ending a long-standing dispute. In a divided judgment, the court held that the refusal by the NGOs Coordination Board to register the group would violate human rights based on sexual orientation. The court said that while Kenya's law prohibiting "unnatural offenses" (carnal knowledge with any man, woman, or animal against the order of nature) remains to bind, those who contravene this will be subjected to sanctions prescribed in the existing laws. Section 163 prescribes a penalty of imprisonment for seven years for such offenses.

The court held that it would be unconstitutional to limit the right to associate, through the denial of registration of an association, purely based on sexual orientation. The legal dispute emerged from activist Erick Gitari's bid to register an LGBTQ+ organization in Kenya. The board refused to reserve the name of Mr. Gitari's intended NGO on the ground that the penal code criminalizes gay and lesbian liaisons. The Supreme Court held that the board's decision to refuse registration of an LGBTQ+ group was "unreasonable and unjustified".

However, Justices Mohammed Ibrahim and William Ouko dissented, stating that the board could not have allowed the registration of an organization to champion actions that are against the law or expressly banned by the law. As long as Sections 162, 163, and 165 of the Penal Code remain valid laws, then the actions of the board in refusing to allow the reservation of names that include the terms "gays" and "lesbians" cannot be considered unreasonable, irrational, or illegitimate, they said. The two Justices added that the board's decision to reject the names proposed by Mr. Gitari did not amount to discrimination based on sex or sexual orientation.

In conclusion, all persons, whether heterosexual, lesbian, gay, intersex, or otherwise, will be subject to sanctions if they contravene existing laws, including Sections 162, 163, and 165 of the Penal Code. The court determined that the use of the word "sex" under Article 27(4) of the Constitution does not connote the act of sex per se but refers to the sexual orientation of any gender, whether heterosexual, lesbian, gay, intersex or otherwise.