In response to the increasing criminalization of homosexuality throughout Africa in recent years, an international team of researchers released a scientific report countering every government justification for enacting anti-gay laws. A group of scientists shredded every argument used by African governments to justify the recent glut of anti-gay laws across the continent in a new, scathing report. The report published Wednesday by the Academy of Science of South Africa excoriated leaders for unscientific claims that homosexuality is contagious, unnatural, learned or a medical condition. "As variation in sexual identities and orientations has always been part of a normal society, there can be no justification for attempts to ‘eliminate’ LGBTI from society," the report authored by 11 South Africans, one Ugandan and one American said.