Botswana's High Court heard a marriage equality case in late October, brought by a same-sex couple with support from the group LEGABIBO. In an opinion piece for MambaOnline, human rights activist Bradley Fortuin asks why two consenting adults marrying provokes such opposition from people it does not affect. He separates the right to hold religious beliefs from using them to set the legal rights of people who do not share them.

Fortuin links church opposition to a wider anti-gender movement that claims to defend 'African family values'. He rejects the procreation argument, since childless couples may marry, and stresses that civil marriage would not force any church to change its doctrine. For freethinkers, it is a textbook debate on where private faith ends and public law begins.

Source: Bradley Fortuin, MambaOnline (2026-11-07)

Summarised by the FTI newsdesk.