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USA/Africa: Exporting Homophobia
AfricaFocus Bulletin
January 27, 2014 (140127)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan signed harsh anti-gay
legislation into law this month. But Uganda's President Yoweri
Museveni has backed off on full support for anti-gay legislation
passed by Uganda's parliament last month, even while reaffirming
his vehement condemnation of homosexuality as an "abnormality" from
the West. While the delay in Uganda probably stems from pressure by
Western donors, the impetus for the bill was also driven by
external Western involvement, by the U.S. Christian right, as
documented in "God Loves Uganda," the Oscar-shortlisted documentary
film by Roger Ross Williams, which premiered at Sundance last year
and is now playing in U.S. theaters.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains several links for information on
the film and a statement by Roger Ross Williams, the director of
"God Loves Uganda." It also contains excerpts from a 2012 pamphlet
by Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma, published by Political Research
Associates. Dr. Kaoma features in the film, and his research has
focused on exposing the links of the U.S. Christian Right with
pushing homophobia in Africa.
Another AfricaFocus Bulletin sent out today by email, and available
on the web at http://www.africafocus.org/docs14/hom1401a.php,
contains several recent documents reflecting critical African
responses to the stoking of homophobia by some African leaders and
by right-wing religious currents both in the United States and
Africa.
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"God Loves Uganda" Film
Useful Links
The film website (http://www.godlovesuganda.com) includes reviews,
a press kit, and information on screenings of the film.
"God Loves Uganda" Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3_hKv4pEM4
Interview with "God Loves Uganda" director Roger Ross Williams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yoschb4Y8vA
News Updates related to the film
http://www.godlovesuganda.com/news/
Director's Statement
Roger Ross Williams
"I grew up in the black church. My father was a religious leader in
the community and my sister is a pastor. I went to church every
Sunday and sang in the choir. But for all that the church gave me,
for all that it represented belonging, love and community, it also
shut its doors to me as a gay person. That experience left me with
the lifelong desire to explore the power of religion to transform
lives or destroy them. That desire took a new form when I visited
Africa to make my film Music by Prudence. I was struck by how
intensely religious and socially conservative Africans were. There
was literally a church on every corner. People were praying in the
fields. It was like the American evangelical Christianity I had
known - but magnified by Africa's intensity.
The more I learned about religion in Africa, the more intrigued I
became. It was as if the continent was gripped with religious
fervor. And the center of it was Uganda. I began to research; I
took my first trip to Uganda. Uganda, I discovered is the number
one destination for American missionaries. The American Evangelical
movement has been sending missionaries and money, proselytizing its
people, and training its pastors for a generation; building
schools, manning hospitals, even running programs for training
political leaders. Its President and First Lady are evangelical
Christians, as are most members of its Parliament and 85% of the
population.
I began meeting in Uganda �ndash; and in America �ndash; some of the
missionaries who have helped create Uganda's evangelical movement.
They were often large-hearted. They were passionate and committed.
Many of them were kids from America's heartland. And they were, I
began to discover, part of a larger Christian evangelical movement
that believed that Biblical law should reign supreme �ndash; not just in
people's hearts �ndash; but in the halls of government. This movement,
fueled by American money and idealism, had produced a noxious
flower �ndash; Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which made death as one
of the penalties for homosexuality.
Committed to the idea that God wanted all forms of "sexual
immorality" eliminated from the earth," it was the reason why
Uganda had dismantled its successful AIDS program in favor of an
abstinence policy.
I thought about following the activists-brave and admirable men and
women-who were fighting against these policies. But I was more
curious about the people who, in effect, wanted to kill me.
(According to the provisions of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, I
could be put to death or imprisoned.) Notably, almost every
evangelical I met �ndash; American or Ugandan �ndash; was polite, agreeable,
even charming. Yet I knew that if the bill passed, there would be
blood on the streets of Kampala.
What explains that contradiction? What explains the murderous rage
and ecstatic transcendence? In the well-known trope about Africa, a
white man journeys into the heart of darkness and finds the mystery
of Africa and its unknowable otherness. I, a black man, made that
journey and found �ndash; America. -Roger Ross Williams
Colonizing African Values - How the U.S. Christian Right is
Transforming Sexual Politics in Africa
Political Research Associates, 2012
http://www.politicalresearch.org / direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/mmrfmhf
Executive Summary
When Uganda's parliament ended its session in May 2011 without
passing the Anti-Homosexuality Bill levying the death penalty for
"aggravated" homosexuality, human rights activists in Africa and
around the world thought they had defeated the legislation, first
proposed in October 2009. But parliamentarians reintroduced the
"Kill the Gays" Bill in February 2012 with the same inhumane
penalties, similar bills showed up in other countries, and anti-gay
measures passed in Burundi in 2009, Malawi in 2010 and Nigeria in
2011. The Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009 proved to be just
the warning shot for growing attacks on LGBT - and reproductive -
rights across the African continent.
Political Research Associates provided early warning of the
campaigns in its 2009 report, "Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S.
Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia," and singled out
the true instigators of the hateful legislation in Uganda: U.S.
Christian Right figures including the internationally prominent
Baptist pastor and bestselling author, Rick Warren; Scott Lively,
the anti-gay, Holocaust revisionist; and Lou Engle, head of the
revivalist group, The Call, and a leader in the right-wing New
Apostolic Reformation movement. The world applauded when Warren,
and later Lively, spoke out against the Ugandan bill.
But while these leaders backed off, key institutions of the U.S.
Christian Right stepped up their efforts to bring their style of
persecuting sexual minorities - and opposing reproductive rights -
to the continent. Not only are they promoting legislation targeting
LGBT people and abortion (a procedure that is already largely
illegal), they are contributing to the atmosphere of intolerance
that is resulting in "instances of harassment, discrimination,
persecution, violence and murders committed against individuals
because of their sexual orientation or gender identity," as Amnesty
International has reported.
This report investigates how key U.S. Christian conservatives of
various backgrounds - Roman Catholics and Mormons, as well as
right-leaning evangelicals - are expanding the U.S. Christian Right
infrastructure on the African continent with new institutions and
campaigns that are reshaping national political dynamics and even
laws based on an American template. Within the past five years, the
Roman Catholic Human Life International (HLI), the Pat Robertsonfounded
American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ-USA), and Family
Watch International (FWI), led by a Mormon, have launched or
expanded their work in Africa dedicated to promoting their
Christian Right worldview. A loose network of rightwing charismatic
Christians called the Transformation movement joins them in fanning
the flames of the culture wars over homosexuality and abortion by
backing prominent African campaigners and political leaders.
They build off of decades-old encounters of the U.S. Christian
Right on the continent. That includes right-wing evangelical Pat
Robertson's involvement with repressive former Liberian president -
and war criminal - Charles Taylor and White-led apartheid
governments during the Cold War, the deep penetration of his
Christian Broadcasting Network and the Trinity Broadcasting Network
into African homes, and Bible schools and universities founded and
funded by conservative U.S. Christians.
We identified three reasons why these U.S. organizations and
networks can be so influential with relatively modest outlays.
First, white people and Americans continue to enjoy influence in
Africa, in an echo of past colonial relationships, both because
they are from powerful countries and because they have scarce money
to spend. Second, these right-wing organizations and movements
espouse charismatic and other conservative theologies that may not
be mainstream in the United States, but resonate with many African
Christians. The politicization and policy implementation of these
theologies has translated into the persecution of sexual minorities
and increased oppression of women through attempts to restrict
reproductive freedoms. Third, the campaigners are successful in
painting African campaigners for LGBT rights as dupes of
neocolonial forces trying to impose an alien philosophy on the
continent.
By hiring locals as office staff, ACLJ and HLI in particular hide
an American-based agenda behind African faces, giving the Christian
Right room to attack gender justice and LGBT rights as a
neocolonial enterprise imposed on Africans and obstructing
meaningful critique of the U.S. Right's activities.
On the parliamentary front, the groups aim to bring about a new
legal infrastructure in Africa that enshrines their Christian Right
worldview. These infrastructure changes include constitutional
reforms saying life begins at conception, expanding beyond colonial
era "carnal knowledge" laws barring same sex relations, and
blending Church and State - an incendiary goal when the Christians
share the continent with Muslims and traditional religions. Bills
banning same-sex marriage or adoption demonstrate an obvious
American influence in countries where LGBT people do not yet have
the right to exist much less marry or adopt. Similarly, U.S.
conservatives support more regressive action against abortion, even
though it is both largely illegal and fairly common. Since abortion
is widely accepted as a personal matter, even when viewed as
morally wrong, the Christian Right has thus far not secured a
foothold in further undermining reproductive rights.
Among the groups' recent activities in Africa:
- In an aggressive attempt to establish a new legal infrastructure
on the African continent that reflects the U.S. Christian Right's
ideals, the Washington D.C.-based American Center for Law and
Justice opened two Africa offices while Uganda was debating its
anti-homosexuality bill in 2009 and 2010.
Named the East African Center for Law and Justice's (EACLJ) in
Kenya and the African Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) in
Zimbabwe, these U.S. institutions aim to lobby African parliaments
"to take the Christian's views into consideration as they draft
legislation and policies."
In both African countries, we found the center uses influential
evangelical African religious leaders to gain access to top
political leadership. In Zimbabwe, the ACLJ is enlisting the
government of homophobic autocrat Robert Mugabe as an ally, echoing
the unscrupulous alliances Pat Robertson built in the 1980s with
re-pressive apartheid and military governments to expand his
influence on the continent.
During a constitutional reform battle in Kenya in 2010, the EACLJ
succeeded in inserting "culture war" language saying life begins at
conception in the approved draft, but critically failed to remove a
woman's ability to secure an abortion if her health is in danger.
Similarly, they promoted language asserting marriage is between a
man and a woman, but failed to remove language defending all
people's equal protection before the law.
- The conservative Catholic Human Life International spends one
quarter of its overseas budget in sub-Saharan Africa and has
affiliates in Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe
among other African countries. It campaigns against contraception,
a popular practice in Africa, and mirrors anti-LGBT campaign
tactics by claiming against evidence that birth control is a
Western import. In a stark deviation from African culture, which
considers violations of antiabortion law a personal matter, Human
Life International missionaries in Uganda turned in a clinician who
performed an abortion for prosecution.
- Despite her marginal status in the United States and small
budget, Sharon Slater of Family Watch International influences
Africans with alarmist rhetoric that the United Nation's population
control strategy will destroy the African family - and that LGBT
people are somehow to blame. "This manipulation of the UN system by
individuals and organizations promoting their own sexual agenda and
not the collective and unified agenda of all UN member states must
cease," Slater said in a 2010 speech to the United Nations. "All of
this push for sexual rights undermines the institution of the
family." She is trying to harness Christian Right arguments that
have demonized LGBT people to demonize reproductive rights, a
tactic that must be challenged lest it take hold.
With a Christianity saturated with demons and the prosperity gospel
(which claims that simple faith in Jesus Christ will bring wealth
and well-being), Africa provides a receptive home for Christian
Right movements that may be more marginal or a minority in the
United States. Similarly, the embrace of reproduction as a virtue
and childlessness as a tragedy in much of sub-Saharan Africa
provides an opening for HLI and FWI's promotion of "family values"
and even claims that campaigns against overpopulation are a Western
conspiracy to reduce African development. Finally, U.S. Christian
Right influence adds a distinctly homophobic spin to an African
cultural tradition open to viewing same-sex orientation as a sign
of a respected ancestral spirit rather than a demon possession.
We found certain countries were more hospitable to U.S. Christian
Right campaigners than others, in part because of ideological
support from government officials. The presidents of Zambia,
Zimbabwe, and Uganda themselves accused opposition parties of
promoting homosexuality to undercut their influence and cater to
powerful African religious conservatives. The nephew of Ugandan
President Yoweri Museveni, Joseph Okia, leads the east African wing
of the International Transformation Network, which sees LGBT people
as literally embodying demons. Malawi, by contrast, has become a
less hospitable home to the Christian Right since its new
president, Joyce Banda, supported decriminalizing same-sex
relations in the spring of 2012. But it is also the site of renewed
efforts to dislodge her.
Win or lose, these campaigns have triggered a rise in militant
homophobia and anti-gay violence across much of sub-Saharan Africa
and have reshaped national debates. Perhaps the most notorious
instance of violent homophobia occurred in January 2011 when David
Kato, an advocacy officer for the group Sexual Minorities Uganda,
was found bludgeoned to death in his Kampala home. Kato had
received death threats in the months before his killing, after a
local newspaper Rolling Stone published his photo alongside a cover
story charging that homosexuals recruit children. Kato's name and
home address, along with Uganda's other "top homos," were listed in
the article.
Thinly organized with little societal support or financial backing
and effectively no government protections, the African LGBT
community's main concern is survival. Yet human rights activists
find their efforts to support this targeted community - and to
forestall attacks on abortion - immensely challenging. African
allies of the U.S. Christian Right echo their friends in deriding
African and Western human rights campaigners as pursuing a
neocolonial agenda. To better support the communities, allies
around the world need to be more attuned to the complexity of
theological and institutional ties between Africa and the U.S.
Christian Right that this report exposes.
Recommendations
Our research suggests the following actions can help support LGBT
people in sub-Saharan Africa and forestall campaigns against
women's reproductive rights that stem from U.S. Christian Right
influence.
1. Confront the myth that human rights advocacy is Western
neocolonialism
The U.S. Christian Right and its African allies charge that human
rights activists are neocolonialists out to destroy Africa through
the imposition of Western gender norms and policies. This myth is
fueled by deep seated suspicion regarding Western powers and their
motives. We can challenge this myth by exposing the Americanness of
the recent politicization of homosexuality and abortion in Africa.
2. Respect and follow the leadership of African human rights
promoters
We must practice principled solidarity with African human rights
promoters. Human rights advocates in the West can and should
provide increased educational, financial, media, and other
resources that better enable African social justice voices to be
heard above the din of U.S. right-wing campaigns that demonize
sexual minorities.
3. Tell Africans what the U.S. Christian Right really stands for
The U.S. culture wars are still not understood in African circles.
While some tendencies within African Christianity share charismatic
beliefs with U.S. Christian Right campaigners, the African Church
in general is more social-justice-oriented and concerned about the
poor and the disenfranchised. Human rights advocates must expose
the U.S. Christian Right's opposition to social justice initiatives
in the United States - and their historic alignment with White
supremacist and repressive regimes in Africa.
4. Support the visibility of LGBT Africans as a means of curbing
homophobia
Many African sexual minorities exist at the margins of society,
invisible and vulnerable. Broader visibility will enable their
Africanness and humanity to become more broadly evident. Human
rights advocates can assist by establishing educational
opportunities for African LGBT activists in their home countries
and abroad. Such support can assist Africans in maintaining
leadership over their own human rights struggle.
5. Support African leaders who courageously stand for human rights
African politicians and religious leaders - such as Malawian
president Joyce Banda and Ugandan Bishop Christopher Ssenyonjo -
who have stood up for human rights need the support of
international social justice advocates. While many Westerners will
understandably fear being labeled "neocolonialist" for any public
expression of solidarity, we must stand with - and aid - those
defending human rights principles.
6. Put meaningful pressure on African political leadership to
respect human rights African politicians have the power to resist
and reverse the persecution of LGBT persons�ndash; President Joyce
Banda's stance on decriminalization of LGBT persons in Malawi
showcases this. But bold statements coupled with equivocal action
by Western politicians can prove counter-productive; public
pronouncements can easily be characterized as Western bullying by
African press and politicians. Western governments have the
tendency to make threats that they do not enforce - this is
unproductive and unhelpful.
7. Engage African diplomatic missions on issues of Human Rights
Establishing direct relationships with African diplomats associated
with the United Nations and other African embassies will help
dispel the rumors that U.S. human rights activists are out to
recolonize Africa. This direct contact can counter the false
information presented by various Christian Right groups and
figures.
8. Rally Against Bigotry Across Ecumenical Lines
Christian groups need to step up and cross denominational lines to
challenge the Roman Catholic Right. They must extend their
ecumenical alliances beyond their challenge to right-wing
evangelicals. All Americans must continue challenging Christian
Right organizations at home - exposing their unpalatable work in
Africa and compelling organizations, individuals, and religious
hierarchy to distance themselves from their African allies and
actions.
9. Demonstrate Respect for Religion
Africa is a deeply religious continent. U.S. Conservatives
regularly present human rights activists as godless liberals, with
no respect for religion. This perception needs to be challenged and
changed. Religious-based human rights groups and leaders can play a
vital role in defending sexual minorities and women by locating
their commitments in sacred scriptures. Secular advocates should
take care not to degrade the Bible, the Quran, or faith traditions
more generally when challenging religious justifications for
denying human rights.
10. Build Infrastructure for the Long Term
The Christian Right is committed to a longterm strategy to
influence human rights policies in Africa. Western and African
human rights activists must keep sight of their mutual long-term
strategies of meeting universal human rights goals. Human rights
struggles in Africa, as elsewhere, require powerful infrastructures
for leadership development, mobilization, and communications.
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with
a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.
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