Religious Affairs Minister: LGBT Community Must be Embraced

TEMPO.CO, Yogyakarta - Minister of Religious Affairs Lukman Hakim Saifuddin asked society not to excommunicate and avoid lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.

Lukman Hakim said that LGBT people must be embraced, “They must be embraced. Not denounced or avoided,” said Lukman at State University of Yogyakarta on Monday, December 18.

He urged people with religious beliefs to talk to LGBT communities to repent. In addition, Lukman asked religious figures to have an active role to embrace this community to revert back to the correct teachings of their respective religion.

Read: Din Syamsudin: We Must Not Hate LGBT Community

“Religion teaches us that if we know that what they do is considered to be misguided, we are obliged to direct them back to the correct path,” said the minister.

Previously, the Constitutional Court (MK) rejected the lawsuit submitted by a professor at the Bogor Agricultural Institute (IPB) Euis Sunarti who requested the court to expand the meaning of the Article on immoral activities in Lawbook No. 284, 285 and 292. Euis hoped that the LGBT community and people who practice consensual sex outside marriage can be criminalized and jailed.

The Religious Affairs Minister said that there is no legal or religious norm that allows LGBT and sex outside marriage practice. “According to the Law on Marriage, a marriage is religiously legal when it takes place between two different genders,” said Minister Lukman.

Muh. Syaifullah