RW JOHNSON: THE BATTLE OVER HOMOPHOBIA IN AFRICA

Source: RW Johnson (National Post Editor)

OPINION – 13 January 2010: The arrest of a young Malawian male couple who had celebrated a gay marriage ­under the country’s draconian anti-gay laws, they face a 14-year sentence with hard labour - together with the introduction of an Anti-Homosexuality Bill in the Ugandan parliament that increases the penalty for homosexuality from the present seven years in jail to death by hanging, have triggered a major row over differing Western and African attitudes to gay groups.

Both sides in this debate accuse the other of being driven or encouraged by external sources: Gay rights campaigners angrily accuse conservative American evangelists of encouraging homophobia, while the anti-gay side insists that homosexuality is only surfacing openly in Africa because of Western encouragement.

Indeed, some argue that the current African rows over homosexuality are actually just a skirmish by proxies in the American cultural wars, with both evangelicals and gay rights groups in the U.S. pouring in money and support to each side.

Particular attention has fastened on to the visit to Uganda by three U.S. evangelicals, Scott Lively, Caleb Brundidge and Don Schmierer, who held a series of seminars and lectures attended by MPs and government officials where homosexuality was described as a disease which could be healed.

As John Moore writes elsewhere on this page, shortly after the men’s visit, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was introduced and, although the three men disclaim paternity for it, they are being widely blamed for encouraging it. Scott Lively, a Holocaust Revisionist and president of Defend the Family International, told Ugandans that legalizing homosexuality would mean legalizing “the molestation of children and having sex with animals”.

Schmierer works with “homosexual recovery groups”, while Brundidge, who claims once to have been gay himself, works with the International Healing Foundation as a “sexual reorientation coach.” He also leads Christian groups to mortuaries where they attempt to raise the dead, though without notable success to date.

Such conservative Christian groups exercised great influence under the George W. Bush administration and led Bush to pour millions of dollars into Africa, sponsoring sexual abstinence as a principal strategy against AIDS.

What is clear, however, is that they are preaching to the converted. President Yoweri Museveni has warned Ugandan youth that homosexuality is against God’s will and that “European homosexuals are recruiting in Africa,” while his Minister for Ethics and Integrity, Nsaba Buturo, says that homosexuality is a “moral perversion that must not be allowed to spread.” At the recent Commonwealth conference Museveni came under strong pressure from Britain’s Gordon Brown and Canada’s Stephen Harper to modify the draconian Bill. As a result, Buturo is now talking of possibly reducing the penalty for homosexuality to life imprisonment, conceding that “killing them might not be helpful.”

The Ugandan churches are themselves strongly homophobic — indeed Archbishop Henry Orombi and Pastor Martin Sempe have been leading a campaign in support of the government’s bill. Both men are associates of the American evangelist Rick Warren, another prominent anti-gay visitor to Uganda. Warren, pastor of the powerful Saddleback church — America’s eighth biggest — was invited by U.S. President Barack Obama to give the invocation at his inauguration and has been named by both Time and Newsweek as among their top 15 world leaders.

His book, The Purpose Driven Life, has sold over 30 million copies and is much read in Uganda. Naturally, the Church of Uganda is vehemently against gay clergymen and when retired Bishop Christopher Senyonjo preached tolerance toward gays in 2005, Archbishop Orombi not only forbade him to preach but stripped him of his pension.

A somewhat similar pattern is found in Malawi. George Thindwa, director of the Association of Secular Humanism, who is attempting to assist the young gay couple now at the centre of a homophobic storm there, told me that “the churches are definitely spearheading the anti-gay campaign here.” He said that Malawi too was often visited by foreign evangelists, though he thought the local clergy needed little encouragement in their homophobia.

Pastor Mario Manyozo of the Word of Life Tabernacle Church says that “homosexuality is against God’s creation and is an evil act since gays are possessed with demons.” Similar sentiments are echoed by most other churchmen, basing themselves on the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Indeed, Pastor Joseph Mbeme of the Ambassadors for Christ Church says that the Church must pray for homosexuality to be stamped out, otherwise “the world cannot manage”.

Thindwa points out that 83% of Malawians are Christians and another 13% are Muslims ­and that Islamic law is even more furiously hostile to gays. Indeed, in Muslim northern Nigeria the penalty for homosexuality is being stoned to death. Throughout Africa one finds African men are often particularly incensed against lesbians and often dole out their remedy of so-called “correctional rape.”

However, Africans often claim that Western influence is encouraging homosexuality­ and many point to wealthy Westerners who visit Africa as sex tourists, practising pedophilia and “recruiting” gays. Beyond that, many insist that gay activists and Westerners in international organizations encourage gays to come out — the incredulity of ordinary Malawians that, given the fierce anti-gay laws, a gay couple should openly celebrate a gay marriage has led many to suggest they must be mentally ill.

Even African academics take this line. Dr. Peter Atekyereza, associate professor of sociology at Makerere University, Uganda, told me that “external influence is definitely behind the spread of homosexuality,” instancing international organizations dealing with AIDS, orphans and children who, he said, had been giving “scholarships and hand-outs in an attempt to recruit young people to homosexuality.” And, of course, it is true that gay activist groups in the West have rallied to the cause of Africa’s embattled gays.

In Britain, Peter Tatchell of OutRage! is campaigning for their financial and moral support, while American gay groups have sent money to support gay rights activism in Africa. They also lobby the U.S. State Department to take a tough stance in favour of gay rights. Beyond that, many Africans echo Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe who calls gays “sexual perverts — lower than dogs or pigs.” Mugabe also claims homosexuality is “unAfrican,” advising, “Leave whites to do that.”

Often this even leads to assertions that homosexuality never existed in Africa until it was imported by the white man. In fact, what all the sanctions against gays really seek to achieve is that gays should remain as secretive and furtive as they always were in the past. It is the Western push for open toleration of gays, and for gays to come out, that is really considered unacceptable.

In 2009, nine Senegalese gay activists were jailed for eight years because they had come out. This followed an International AIDS conference held in Senegal attended by 50 foreign gay activists who stressed the need for gays to be dealt with openly. The cause of the nine was energetically taken up not only by gay groups around the world but also by the UN Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. For, of course, such organizations are often staffed by Western liberals who are in favour of gay rights. And AIDS activists despair of dealing with the disease if gays cannot come out openly to be treated.

The activists naturally seek help from foreign groups: When the Sunday Times spoke to Gift Trapence, the head of the Malawian Centre for the Development of People, which has taken a strong pro-gay position, he and his supporters were headed for a meeting with the local UN representative. Already last year Uganda expelled the local director of UN-AIDS for organizing a meeting with Ugandan gay activists.

The current imbroglio has only heightened this perception. The U.S. and Sweden, both major donors in Uganda, have threatened to cut off aid if the Anti-Homosexuality Bill there is not moderated. This produced an anguished editorial in the Uganda Record which accused the West of trying to bully Africans into homosexuality. “To Africans this is an almost existential matter. Their very future as societies is at stake.” Africa has, it argued, managed to accept tough IMF conditions “but for the acceptance of homosexuality to be made part of the conditions for continued aid from the West seems a step beyond, which they cannot go ... they cannot bring themselves to accept that homosexuality is a modern, fully acceptable way of life”.