The Guardian talked to lesbian women in townships in Johannesburg and Cape Town who said they were being deliberately targeted for rape and that the threat of violence had become an everyday ordeal.

“Every day I am told that they are going to kill me, that they are going to rape me and after they rape me I’ll become a girl,” said Zakhe Sowello from Soweto, Johannesburg. “When you are raped you have a lot of evidence on your body. But when we try and report these crimes nothing happens, and then you see the boys who raped you walking free on the street.”

Research released last year by Triangle, a leading South African gay rights organisation, revealed that a staggering 86% of black lesbians from the Western Cape said they lived in fear of sexual assault. The group says it is dealing with up to 10 new cases of “corrective rape” every week.

When will people stop treating gay and lesbian people like dirt and assuming that for gay and lesbians to be full people they have to be corrected?   This practice is only the logical and brutal conclusion that all those who promote hatred against gay people – including those on the religious right in America who enroll their children in ex-gay camps and preach anti-gay rhetoric from their pulpits.  J’accuse.