Out in the World: LGBTQ news from Oceania, Australia, and Europe
TONGA A group of lawyers in the South Pacific nation of Tonga has called for the removal of newly appointed Chief Justice Malcolm Bishop because he is openly gay.
Bishop, a 71-year-old native of Wales, was appointed to the role last month. It is relatively common in small island nations for judges to be appointed from other Commonwealth countries, due to the scarcity of qualified jurists.
Bishop has more than five decades of legal experience and has lived as an openly gay man through much of his career. But a group of Tongan lawyers say Bishop should not serve on the bench because “his lifestyle conflicts with the law of Tonga,” and they’ve petitioned King Tupou VI to remove him.
The group cites Tonga’s Criminal Offenses Act, which criminalizes sodomy with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. But that opposition is not universal.
