The Scourge of Homophobia in Economically Impoverished Countries

My friend John sent me the following article from The Economist after reading Saturday’s Wild Reed post on the release from prison of Malawi gay couple Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza. In particular, John drew my attention to that part of the article that highlights the role played by American Christian missionaries in inciting and/or perpetuating homophobia in Africa.

Christians, mainly from America . . . are eager to engage African clergy in their own domestic battle against homosexuality. David Bahati, the Ugandan MP who proposed [that country’s anti-gay] bill, is a member of the Fellowship, a conservative American religious and political organisation. “Africa must seem an exciting place for evangelical Christians from places like America,” says Marc Epprecht, a Canadian academic who studies homosexuality in Africa. “They can make much bigger gains in their culture wars there than they can in their own countries.” Their ideas have found fertile ground. In May this year, George Kunda, Zambia’s vice-president, lambasted gay people, saying they undermined the country’s Christian values and that sadism and Satanism could be the result.

As you'll see, the article includes a chart showing how gay people fare in various African and Middle Eastern countries (see below). It should be noted that because the focus of the article is on economically poor countries, Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf states, all of which have draconian laws on homosexuality, are neither included in this chart or discussed in the article.

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A Well-Locked Closet

Gays are under attack in poor countries
— and not just because of “local culture”

The Economist
May 27, 2010

Their crimes were “gross indecency” and “unnatural acts”. Their sentence was 14 years’ hard labour: one intended, said the judge, to scare others. He has succeeded. A court in Malawi last week horrified many with its treatment of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, a gay couple engaged to be married. The two men are the latest victims of a crackdown on gay rights in much of the developing world, particularly Africa.

Some 80 countries criminalise consensual homosexual sex. Over half rely on “sodomy” laws left over from British colonialism. But many are trying to make their laws even more repressive. Last year, Burundi’s president, Pierre Nkurunziza, signed a law criminalising consensual gay sex, despite the Senate’s overwhelming rejection of the bill. A draconian bill proposed in Uganda would dole out jail sentences for failing to report gay people to the police and could impose the death penalty for gay sex if one of the participants is HIV-positive. In March Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, who once described gay people as worse than dogs or pigs, ruled out constitutional changes outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation.

In many former colonies, denouncing homosexuality as an “unAfrican” Western import has become an easy way for politicians to boost both their popularity and their nationalist credentials. But Peter Tatchell, a veteran gay-rights campaigner, says the real import into Africa is not homosexuality but politicised homophobia.

This has, he argues, coincided with an influx of conservative Christians, mainly from America, who are eager to engage African clergy in their own domestic battle against homosexuality. David Bahati, the Ugandan MP who proposed its horrid bill, is a member of the Fellowship, a conservative American religious and political organisation. “Africa must seem an exciting place for evangelical Christians from places like America,” says Marc Epprecht, a Canadian academic who studies homosexuality in Africa. “They can make much bigger gains in their culture wars there than they can in their own countries.” Their ideas have found fertile ground. In May this year, George Kunda, Zambia’s vice-president, lambasted gay people, saying they undermined the country’s Christian values and that sadism and Satanism could be the result.

Discrimination against gays, in Africa in particular, risks undermining the fight against HIV/AIDS. In February, those suspected of being gay were targeted in Kenya in mob violence at a government health centre providing HIV/AIDS services. Bishop Joshua Banda, chairman of Zambia’s National AIDS Council, said that donor countries’ efforts to speak out against violations of gay rights were against Zambia’s “traditional values”. The increasing crackdown on gay rights in Africa will be a disaster for public health, according to Mr Epprecht, as gay people go underground and do not get treatment for HIV/AIDS.

The problem goes beyond Africa and is more than one of state-sponsored homophobia. In Iraq, for example, homosexuality is legal. But in 2009 Human Rights Watch described the persecution that men suspected of being gay there face, including kidnappings, rape, torture and extrajudicial killings. In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, there has been a growing fear of the “feminisation” of Iraqi men. The Mahdi Army, a Shia militia, has played on these fears and, claiming to uphold religious values and morality, offered violent “solutions”. Members of the Iraqi security forces have also been accused of colluding in the violence. [See the previous Wild Reed post, To Be Gay in Iraq . . .]



South Africa was the first country anywhere to ban homophobic discrimination in its constitution. It is the only country in Africa to allow gay marriage. In formal legal terms, it is a beacon for gay rights, says Mr Tatchell. But the growing phenomenon of “corrective rape” both there and in Zimbabwe, where women are assaulted in an attempt to “cure” them of lesbianism, suggests these laws often fail on the ground. As worrying to campaigners as the violence itself is a reluctance by the authorities to acknowledge that the attacks are motivated by homophobia. In April 2008 Eudy Simelane, a South African football player who was a lesbian, was gang-raped and stabbed to death. Two men were convicted of her murder but, in his sentencing, the judge denied that Ms Simelane’s sexuality played a part in the crime.

Hopes rose a little in June 2009 when India overturned its 149-year-old sodomy law but since then the global trend seems to have been in the opposite direction. [Some would question this, especially in light of advances in gay rights in a number of South American countries, and in Portugal.] Campaigners argue the proposed laws have implications beyond gay rights. How countries treat one particularly vulnerable group is a good measure of how they will act towards the rest of their citizens.

To read comments on this article by the readers of The Economist, click here.


Recommended Off-site Links:
LGBT Rights by Country or Territory
Gays Without Borders
Slouching Toward Kampala: Uganda's Deadly Embrace of Hate - Jim Burroway (Box Turtle Bulletin, February 2009 - present).
Black, Gay, and Indisputably African - Douglas Foster (Los Angeles Times, January 10, 2010).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Malawi Gay Couple Released from Prison
A Prayer for International Day Against Homophobia
Update on Tiwonge and Steven
To Be Gay in Iraq
The Blood-Soaked Thread
The Tragedy of Homophobia
Homophobia? It’s So Gay
Officially Homophobic, Intensely Homoerotic
The Vatican’s Actions at the UN: “Sickening, Depraved, and Shameless”
Oh, Give It a Rest, Papa!
A Humorous Look at Internalized Homophobia
Frank Rich on the “Zelig of Homophobia” and a “Heaven-Sent Rent Boy”
Coming Out in Africa and the Middle East
Homosexual Relations Decriminalized in India
Liberated to Be Together
Sergius and Bacchus: Martyrs, Saints, and Lovers