right to engage in non-consensual sex, or sex with child. What they do suggest is that laws preventing gay men from having sex at all cannot be justified. If proscriptions on homosexual behaviour are there to protect children and the vulnerable, then the law must be no wider than it need to be to achieve this purpose. The law protects children from heterosexual adults without imposing a blanket ban on heterosexual sex; it can do the same with homosexuals through the mechanism of an age of consent. Rights of sexual orientation do not require that people are forced to participate in behaviour that they dislike, nor does it require even that they approve of the behaviour. They are free to hold their same opinion, but without forcing them onto others. Gays and lesbians do not demand greater rights than the heterosexual community. They simply demand equality of treatment. If an action is prohibited for a heterosexual, then so it should be prohibited for a homosexual. In short, gays and lesbians simply demand equal rights. The inclusion or otherwise of sexual orientation rights will be a litmus test for the Constitution makers. It will reveal whether there is a determination to draw a constitution which will comply with Zimbabwe’s obligations and undertakings in International Law and the norms of human rights; whether it will comply with the democratic requirement of an acceptance of difference; whether it will seek to build a non-stigmatising society which embraces all its constituents: or whether it will be merely an expression of subservience to those who wield political power. Exclusion of sexual orientation from the provisions of Zimbabwe’s new constitution will be a symptom of an ill-fated constitution and is but the passing whim of prejudice.